


write a second verse yourself

by Hirikka



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Alternate Universe - Howl's Moving Castle Fusion, Cursed Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Curses, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia and Jaskier | Dandelion are Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon's Parents, M/M, Minor Canonical Character(s), Minor Character Death, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Past Jaskier | Dandelion/Valdo Marx, Slow Burn, Spells & Enchantments, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:13:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 39,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26306143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hirikka/pseuds/Hirikka
Summary: Geralt never thought he would end up on an Adventure; he was sure he would live a perfectly ordinary and dull life. That changes when the wicked Wizard of the Waste mistakenly believes that he is a rival for the affections of the mysterious wizard Jaskier and curses him. Geralt must set out on a Quest to break his curse, with help from some unlikely allies.Howl's Moving Castle AU!
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 69
Kudos: 112
Collections: Witcher Big Bang





	1. In which Geralt encounters wizards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the The Witcher Big Bang 2020! I've been working on this for so long now and I'm so excited to finally release it into the wild!  
> Thank you to handwrittenhello for beta-ing this! Your help has been invaluable during this whole process!  
> The art is by the absolutely fantastic [astraaeterna](https://astraaeterna.tumblr.com/)!

Geralt was the oldest of three brothers. In a world of magic, this was not ideal. It was best to be the youngest of seven, because surely good—or at least interesting—things ensued. Being the oldest of three did not lend itself to magical adventures, only to hard work and responsibility.

Geralt knew all the stories; the stories about seventh sons of seventh sons or the girl with two elder sisters who found a path to greatness. He had grown up with these stories and, by the time he and his brothers were finished with school and set up with apprenticeships, had mostly resigned himself to the fact that a life of adventure was not for him. Eskel was to learn magic with a sorceress in nearby Temeria, Lambert would work at Kaer Morhen Bakery, and as the oldest, Geralt would work at the family shop, Bellegarde’s Books, learning all he would need to know in order to take over someday.

About this time, rumors began circulating about the Wizard of the Waste, who had threatened King Fredefalk and the safety of the entire kingdom. The royal wizard Priscilla was sent out into the Waste to try to stop him. Priscilla not only failed to defeat the wizard, but had also gotten herself killed.

Geralt did not pay much attention to the stories, since he was busy with his work, and there was little chance of any of this impacting their small town. Of course, as soon as he had decided that, the castle appeared on the ridge above Rivia. Castles did not typically _appear;_ they were usually built, slowly and with a lot of labour, but this one _appeared,_ a hulking form on the hill above the town. That was strange enough, but the castle did not stay put. It moved, coming in and out of sight of the town and sparking all kinds of rumors. It must have belonged to a witch or wizard, but _who?_ And what was it doing here? People were terrified that it might be the Wizard of the Waste coming to terrorize the countryside.

Within a few weeks, it was discovered that it belonged to the wizard Jaskier, and that stirred up a whole new wave of fear and excitement. It was well known that Jaskier was a terrible and eccentric figure, who frequently spirited away beautiful young people and stole their hearts and souls. No one knew what he did with the souls, but everyone was _sure_ that it was something positively dreadful.

With the castle in the distance, Geralt was forced to admit that his own life was rather dull—binding books became tedious quickly. He didn’t get out much; he rarely even saw his own brothers these days, let alone other people. He decided that he would go out into the town, since it was May Day and people were out celebrating; perhaps something interesting would happen. He was excited when he went out, but he quickly realized that he didn’t really enjoy the crowds; the noise and jostling people were overwhelming.

“Hm.” Geralt considered the merits of going back inside versus making his way over to see Lambert, but he didn’t like the idea of giving up, so he continued to push his way through the throng.

The crowd was mostly sticking to the main streets where the stalls and festivities were happening. Geralt ducked down a side-street, empty except for a unit of soldiers, breathing a sigh of relief as he escaped the worst of the mob.

His relief was short-lived as two soldiers peeled away from their group and blocked Geralt’s path. “Looks like a little kitten lost its way,” one of the soldiers said, leering at him.

“I’m not lost,” Geralt snapped.

The soldier ignored him. “The little kitten looks thirsty. We should take him for an ale.”

“Not interested.”

“He’s pretty cute,” the other soldier said. “You live around here?”

“Leave me alone!” Geralt growled. He was fairly certain he could take these two, but their friends were not far off, and he didn’t want to fight an entire squadron in the middle of town.

“You see, your moustache scares away all the cute ones.”

“So? I think he’s even cuter when he’s scared.”

Geralt growled—about to point out that he was angry, not scared, and then do something truly inadvisable—when he felt someone come up behind him.

“There you are, darling. Sorry I’m late.” A man was leaning into Geralt’s space. He was dressed in a sparkling gold doublet, and he radiated power. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Hey, we’re busy here!” the first soldier snapped.

The new man looked at the soldier, his blue eyes turning cold and vicious. “Are you really?” He waved his hand, seeming to trace shapes in the air. “It looked to me like the two of you were about to leave.”

As he finished speaking, both men turned and started walking away, motions jerky, as if they were not fully in control of their movements. Based on their protests as they moved away, they really weren’t. Geralt realized with a start that the man in the golden jacket must be a wizard.

“Where to? I’ll be your escort this evening,” the wizard offered, leaning in close to Geralt again.

Geralt thought about pushing him away, but he was intrigued. “I’m heading to Kaer Morhen.”

The wizard nodded, hooking his arm through Geralt’s and pulling him close. “Don’t be alarmed, but I’m being followed.”

_What an alarming thing to say_ , Geralt thought, turning to look behind him. He watched with horror as odd goo-like creatures emerged from the walls behind them, taking on forms vaguely resembling people.

“Act normal,” the wizard whispered.

“What,” Geralt hissed, “does normal look like when you are being followed by magical creatures?”

The wizard glanced back as well. “Ah, well. It looks like you’re involved.” He cast Geralt a rueful look. “Brace yourself.”

“For what?” Geralt wanted to ask, but suddenly he was being lifted by the arm. The wizard was grinning brightly, but there was something _off_ about it that Geralt couldn’t identify.

“Straighten your legs,” the wizard instructed, “and start walking.”

Geralt did as he was told, as they leveled out fifteen feet above the crowds on the streets.

“You’re a natural!” The wizard beamed.

Geralt huffed a disbelieving laugh as the wizard steered them along the roads toward Kaer Morhen Bakery, setting them down on the second floor balcony.

“I’ll draw them off, but wait a while before heading back outside,” the wizard advised, stepping back off the balcony into the open air.

Geralt nodded.

“That’s my guy.” The wizard grinned, winked at him, and then turned a corner and disappeared from view.

**

“You should be more careful. What if that had been Jaskier?” Lambert asked.

“He seemed kind,” Geralt pointed out. There might not be a _lot_ of wizards in the world, but he was sure he would have recognized Jaskier, if it had been him. “He rescued me.”

Lambert just rolled his eyes. “Of course he did; he was trying to steal your heart!”

Geralt looked at him dubiously.

“He would have eaten it,” Lambert carried on, apparently very taken with the idea of heart-eating wizards.

“That’s ridiculous,” Geralt said. “Besides, he only does that to beautiful people.”

“Don’t give _me_ that.”

“Sorry.”

Lambert bumped his shoulder into Geralt’s. “You need to be more careful. I heard the Wizard of the Waste is back on the prowl.”

“Fine,” Geralt agreed. It wasn’t as though he typically went out or did things that were likely to put him in the paths of wizards anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic started as an AU based on the Howl's Moving Castle movie (because I saw a particular gifset and I was like, but what if it was Geralt and jaskier?) but then I read the book and boy is there some wild stuff in there so this grew wildly out of control.  
> I hope you all enjoy!!  
> Come say hi on [tumblr](https://hirikka.tumblr.com/)!


	2. In which Geralt is compelled to seek his fortune

The shine of Geralt’s new apprenticeship wore off quickly once he had to start dealing with customers. It was all well and good to work by himself in the back room, quietly talking to the leather as he embossed covers and marbled paper for end-pages. He enjoyed this aspect of the work, but the workshop wasn’t separate enough to prevent him from hearing—or being forced to address—the complaints of the customers as they came and went. 

Geralt found himself growing frustrated and almost considered leaving the shop to set out on his own. Perhaps there was something out there he would be better suited for. Every time the thought crossed his mind, however, he forced himself to remember that he was an eldest sibling and he didn’t want to disappoint Vesemir. Not to mention, there were ways that these sorts of things worked, and setting off on an adventure was something that only ever seemed to work out for youngest children or those with special gifts. 

The thought was still tempting after a particularly rude customer had stormed out of the shop, swearing never to return. Geralt glowered at the door, remembering Vesemir’s warnings: _Lose your temper, lose a customer._ He tried not to think about how much he had enjoyed snapping back at the man.

**

The grandest person Geralt had ever seen sauntered into the shop, diamonds studded in his black suit. He wore an elaborate bonnet also decorated with gems and an enormous feather. A young woman with blonde hair followed the man, also well dressed, if not quite as grandly. She stared at Geralt with a look of helpless horror. 

“Geralt?” the man asked, in a low musical voice.

Geralt nodded. “How can I help you?”

The man ignored him, sparkling his way over to the rack of handbound notebooks and touching the covers of each. 

He picked one up, black and white with a dragon embossed on the front.

“This doesn’t do anything for anyone,” the man declared.

Geralt wasn’t entirely sure what he meant, and he was tired and short-tempered. “This is only a small shop in a small town, sir. Why did you”—behind the man, the young woman winced and tried to signal that Geralt should stop speaking—“bother to come in?”

“I always bother when someone sets themselves up against the Wizard of the Waste,” the man declared. “I’ve heard of you, Geralt of Rivia, and I don’t care for your competition or attitude.”

Geralt frowned; he couldn’t imagine what they were in competition about. “You’re the Wizard of the Waste?” He was not impressed. The Wizard of the Waste had always been made to sound menacing and dreadful. This person just seemed ridiculous.

“I am,” the wizard said, as if Geralt should be impressed and humbled, “and let that teach you to meddle with things that belong to me.”

“What?” Geralt asked. He meant: _What_ will teach me, and _what_ thing did I meddle with?

The wizard ignored the question, and really, were all wizards so strange? “Come along, Anatidae.” He turned and headed over to the door. The woman held the door open for him and cast a sympathetic look back to Gearlt. 

The Wizard of the Waste paused on his way out to say, “By the way, you won’t be able to tell anyone that you’re under a spell.” He twinkled menacingly one final time and then left, the door swinging shut behind him.

“What spell?” Geralt asked the empty room.

**

Geralt felt terrible when he woke up the next morning—sore all over in a way he had never felt before. He hauled himself out of bed, trying to ignore the aches in his joints. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and froze in shock. He held his hands out in front of him, looking at the wrinkles.

“Fuck,” he growled. Moving closer to the mirror, he took in the results of the wizard’s spell. He was _old,_ dark hair turned white and wrinkles lining his face. He glanced at his hands again, which looked like they belonged to someone who was about eighty and seemed to be _real_. The only thing that remained of his usual features were his yellow eyes.

“Fuck,” he snarled again, more emphatically. He sat down, slowly and carefully, as he considered his situation. He couldn’t stay here. He thought about going to say goodbye to Vesemir or Lambert, but he couldn’t bear the idea that they might not recognize him. He was going to have to go and see if he could find someone to break the curse, and he would have to do it by himself; the Wizard had said he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about the curse, so he couldn’t ask for aid.

If this were a proper fairy tale, he would be given a noble quest to complete, and at the end of it, he would be returned to himself. The Wizard had done this out of spite, for some reason that Geralt could not begin to figure out, so it didn’t seem likely that there would be an easy solution. 

**

Geralt left Rivia and shuffled out onto the country lanes that stretched over the moors. He kept walking until it felt as though he had been going forever, though when he looked back, he could still see the town behind him. He ached all over, and the wind over the moors was cutting and sharp. He was miserable and grumpy and not in the mood for any more nonsense.

He spotted a long straight stick stuck in a patch of brambles, and made his way over. A cane would make this trek at least a little easier.

Of course, it was firmly stuck in the bush. He put all of his strength into levering it out, trying not to think about how little all of his strength was turning out to be. 

With a final heave, the stick came loose, proving to be the bottom pole of a scarecrow.

“Your head’s a turnip. I’ve always hated turnips,” he told the scarecrow. 

The scarecrow did not respond.

“If only I wasn’t an eldest child,” Geralt sighed, stepping away from the scarecrow and watching as it somehow stood on its own. “You would come to life and help me on my quest.”

The scarecrow remained still and lifeless. Geralt shook the thoughts away. Just because he had been cursed didn’t mean he should expect fairy tale assistance. People were probably cursed all the time and just lived with it.

**

Geralt found he tired more easily now, and he needed to stop to rest around noon. He wasn’t happy about it, as he had hardly made any progress away from Rivia, but he didn’t have much choice. Geralt took a seat on a little knoll of grass and pulled out the bread and cheese he had packed. 

At first he thought it was just the sound of the wind over the moors, but after a moment, he realized there was something squeaking in a hedge behind him. Geralt kneeled to look over the hedge and spotted a skinny little dog. She was trapped—a rope tied around her neck was twisted around part of the hedge. 

The dog bared her teeth, frightened and panicking. Geralt huffed and pulled out a pair of scissors. Careful to avoid the dog’s teeth, he sawed through the rope. 

The dog snarled, but Geralt didn’t falter.

“You’ll starve or strangle yourself,” Geralt told the dog, “unless you let me cut you loose.” The rope was tight around the dog's neck, and Geralt bit back a growl of his own—whoever had done this had clearly been trying to harm the dog. After another few moments, Geralt managed to cut through the rope.

“Would you like some cheese?” Geralt offered. The dog just growled again and then forced her way through the hedge. As soon as she was free, she raced away.

“Hm.” Geralt watched until long after the dog had disappeared from view. “That’s two encounters and not a scrap of magical gratitude from either.”

**

The sun was starting to set, and Geralt was coming to realize that he had not thought this plan through. He hadn’t really brought camping supplies, and all that he could see before him were the unending hills and valleys of the moors. 

A rhythmic thumping drew him from his thoughts. He turned to see the scarecrow hopping after him. He closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them again, the scarecrow would be gone. 

No such luck.

“Go away,” he called. “Quit following me!”

The scarecrow hopped closer.

“Really, you don’t owe me a thing!” Geralt called. “I’m sure you have some kind of spell on you, but I’ve had more than enough of spells.”

The scarecrow did not seem bothered; instead, it moved closer and extended a cane to Geralt.

“Oh,” Geralt said, taking the cane. It was quite well made, with a handle in the shape of a wolf. “Thank you.”

The scarecrow bobbed in a way that might have been a response.

“If you happened to want to help a little more,” Geralt added, trying not to think too hard about the fact that he was talking to a scarecrow, “you could find me a place to stay for the night?”

The scarecrow turned and hopped into the gathering darkness. 

Geralt watched it go for several moments before he shrugged. Either it would return or it wouldn’t. He couldn’t worry about that now; the air was already starting to cool, and the seemingly endless moors stretched out before him. He needed to find somewhere to rest that would provide some shelter from the winds before his old body gave up on him. 


	3. In which Geralt enters into a castle and a bargain

It was almost completely dark when Geralt felt the earth beneath his feet start to tremble. That was soon followed by the rumbling sounds of machinery and the scent of smoke. 

Geralt turned in the direction of the noise with a growing sense of dread. The turnip-headed scarecrow was hopping along, the moving castle looming behind it.

Calling it a castle was not entirely accurate; it was a mishmash of shapes and materials. It looked like it might have been cobbled together by a giant toddler. It was also moving quite rapidly, on large mechanical legs, directly towards him. 

“You turnip-head,” Geralt shouted. “That’s Jaskier’s castle. That’s not what I meant when I asked for a place to stay.”

Turnip-Head bounced closer, followed by the castle. As the castle rumbled closer, a wind whipped up, cutting through Geralt’s clothes.

“I suppose Jaskier wouldn’t be interested in an old man’s heart,” Geralt decided. Even if the wizard was, the idea of a warm fire was overpowering any fear Geralt might have felt.

“Stop!” he shouted at the castle. To his immense surprise it did stop, only 20 feet away from him. This close he could see it listing to the side—it looked as if it might collapse at any moment. 

“What a stupid way to treat a building,” Geralt sighed, looking up at the smoke billowing from one of the turrets. 

The first door he tried was blocked by an invisible barrier. He made his way around the castle, grumbling the entire way, until he found a much smaller and more humble looking door. As he approached that one, the castle shifted, starting to move again.

“No you don’t!” Geralt snapped, ignoring his aching body to make a lunge for the door. He managed to catch hold of it, just as the castle started to pick up speed. This door opened easily; Geralt was momentarily relieved until he realized his path inside was blocked by a young girl.

He stared at her in shock. He couldn’t quite understand what she was doing here when everyone said that Jaskier ate the hearts of pretty young people. She was quite young, probably only ten or so, so perhaps she was too young to have her heart eaten. 

“What do you want?” the girl asked.

Geralt would have answered, but he had spotted a fireplace over her shoulder, and in front of that a comfortable looking armchair. His tired old body wanted nothing more than to get to that chair. Ignoring the girl, Geralt pushed into the room and sank into the chair with a sigh of relief. He was not going to move, possibly ever again, he decided. 

The girl was still watching him. Geralt closed his eyes, hoping if he pretended to sleep she wouldn’t ask any questions and he wouldn’t have to come up with any explanations.

**

Geralt woke with a start; the room around him was dark and empty. The fire was smoldering. With a shiver Geralt leaned forward and placed another log on the fire before trying to settle more comfortably into the chair. _What have I gotten myself into?_ Geralt wondered. _I can’t just wander the moors hoping for a solution. I’ll have to figure out_ something _to do in the morning._ “I suppose I could wait until Jaskier comes back. He might be able to lift the spell,” Geralt mused. “On the other hand, if the spell is undone, he might eat my heart before I can escape.”

“Don’t you want your heart eaten?” the fire asked.

Geralt jumped at the unexpected voice. “Of course I don’t!” He could almost make out the shape of a face in the center of the flames, with flashing purple eyes. “Are you Jaskier?” 

The fire crackled in a way that managed to convey intense disapproval. “Of course not! I’m an extremely powerful fire demon. You may call me Yennefer. That spell feels like one of the Wizard of the Waste’s to me.”

“It is,” Geralt agreed.

“How about making a bargain with me?” Yennefer added in a soft, persuasive flicker. “I’ll break your spell if you can break the contract I’m under.”

Geralt looked at the fire, considering the offer. He knew the terrible risks of making a deal with a demon, but he didn’t have a lot of options. “How do I know I can trust you?”

Yennefer seemed to shrug. “You can’t know for sure, but do you have any better options? Do you _want_ to stay like that until you die? That curse has shortened your life by at least sixty years.”

That was not a pleasant thought. “I suppose not,” Geralt sighed. “What do I need to do to break your spell?”

The fire grinned. “You agree to the bargain?”

“If you agree to break the spell on me,” Geralt said, with the sense that he was saying something fatal.

“Done!” The fire crackled for a moment. “I can’t tell you how to break the contract. Just like you can’t tell me about your curse.”

“Then how am I supposed to break it?” Geralt growled. “I don’t have any magical abilities.”

“You don’t need to,” Yennefer said. “If you stay here and pay attention you’ll be able to figure it out.”

“And how,” Geralt asked, “am I supposed to convince Jaskier to let me stay?”

Yennefer seemed to consider this for several long moments. “I’ll come up with something.”

Geralt nodded in agreement, feeling himself sinking back into sleep.


	4. In which Geralt discovers several strange things

When Geralt woke again, sunlight was streaming in through the window. He didn’t remember seeing any windows when he entered the castle the night before, but the castle _moved,_ so he supposed it didn’t have to follow any kind of rules about construction or appearance.

Geralt shifted in his chair, grimacing at the aches all over his body. Sleeping in the chair had been a mistake. Geralt was suddenly furious with the Wizard of the Waste. He had been in a state of shock yesterday, but now he was angrier than he had ever been. “What kind of person does that?” he growled. “Just shows up in shops and turns people old for no reason!” 

He used the anger to push himself to his feet, ignoring the aches and pains. He hobbled over to the window; the view outside was of a dockside town. Geralt blinked at it for a long moment. Rivia was well inland, and he had never seen the sea before. 

“Where am I?” Geralt muttered to the skull sitting on a shelf above a cluttered workbench. “I don’t expect you to answer,” he added, remember this was a wizard’s house. He wasn’t sure he could handle it if the skull _did_ respond. 

Luckily, the skull remained silent. Geralt turned to look around the room. It was fairly small, a little kitchen area with a small dining table covered in books and parchment. The room was _disgusting_ , dusty and grimy; cobwebs hung from the black beams of the ceiling and there seemed to be some sort of slime in the sink. 

Geralt shuddered and turned away from the mess. There were four doors leading out of the room. The first he approached led to a large bathroom. It would have been luxurious, if not for the layers of grime on every surface. There were several shelves cluttered with bottles and packets, the only things in the room that weren’t starting to grow a green weed. 

Geralt glanced around the room again before deciding that he did not have the capacity to deal with it this early. Heading back into the main room, he approached the next door. This one led to a flight of rickety looking stairs. Someone was moving up there, so Geralt shut that door and moved on to the next. 

The third door opened onto a cluttered backyard. Geralt frowned at the piles of junk that stood almost to the top of the high brick walls. None of this matched what he had seen of the castle the night before. Stepping out into the yard, the house behind him didn’t look like the castle at all. It looked remarkably like the back of a perfectly ordinary house. Puzzling over this, Geralt went back inside and shut the door. 

The fourth door in the kitchen led to a small broom cupboard, empty except for two finely made cloaks. Geralt shut that door and looked around the room. The only other door was the one he had come in through the night before. Opening that door, Geralt could see the heather of the moors passing them as the castle rumbled along a hillside. He watched for a moment, enjoying the warm summer breeze before turning back to survey the little kitchen.

“I don’t understand,” he said to the human skull sitting on a shelf above the worktable. The skull didn’t answer. Geralt wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed. He pushed that thought aside and went to add another log to the fire. 

“Good morning,” the fire demon said, long tendril-like arms reaching out to envelop the log. “Don’t forget about our bargain.”

Geralt frowned at the fire, trying to figure out how he was meant to break a curse he didn’t know anything about. 

“You’re still here,” said the girl he had met the night before, jumping down the stairs two at a time. “Is something the matter?’

“I’m old,” Geralt began, and then found himself unable to continue speaking. So, the wizard had told the truth when he warned that Geralt wouldn’t be able to discuss his curse.

“Well,” Ciri said, apparently taking that as an explanation, “it comes to us all in time. I’m Ciri, by the way. I suppose you can stay until Jaskier comes back. What is your name?”

“Geralt.”

“Creyden door!” Yennefer called out as the doorbell rang.

Ciri moved towards the doorway, making a quick gesture with her hand and suddenly she looked as old as Geralt. 

“Mister mayor, good day,” she said, swinging the door open to reveal an ordinary street in a bustling city.

“Good afternoon, is the great wizard Dandelion at home?”

“I’m afraid my master is out at the moment. I speak for him in his absence.”

From Geralt’s place by the fire he could see the relief in the man’s expression as he held out a scroll to the girl, “An invitation from His Majesty. The time for war is upon us! His Majesty requires that every witch and wizard aid our homeland. Wizard Dandelion must report to the palace immediately. That is all.” He turned on his heel and marched away.

The girl sighed, tossing the letter into the pile of stuff on the counter top. She turned to Geralt. “Okay, Geralt, would you like some breakfast?” 

Geralt nodded, suddenly remembering that he hadn’t eaten since the morning before. 

“We have bread and cheese,” Ciri offered, peering into one of the cupboards.

“There are fresh eggs right there,” Geralt pointed out.

Ciri frowned. “Well yes, but Jaskier’s the only one who can cook.”

“I can cook.” Geralt couldn’t make anything fancy, but he was certainly capable of making eggs.

“You don’t understand,” Ciri said. “It’s Yennefer, she’s too proud. She’ll barely tolerate Jaskier cooking.”

“Hm,” Geralt said, looking over towards the fire. Yennefer shot up several purple sparks of flame.

“I refuse to be exploited.” 

“Hm.” Geralt glanced appraisingly over at the nervous looking child and the fire. “No. I want tea, and you shouldn’t have to go without a proper breakfast just because Jaskier isn't here.”

Yennefer flared up. “I don’t cook! I’m a terrible and powerful fire demon!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Geralt told her, “or I won’t feed you any more logs.”

Yennefer was still too tall for him to place a pan over the flames so he leaned closer, “do you want me to tell Jaskier about our bargain?”

“Oh, oh!” Yennefer spluttered, “I should never have let you in here!” she sank down, low enough that Geralt was able to place a pan onto the trivet and adding some slices of bacon. 

“Do you have a kettle?” Geralt turned to see Ciri watching him with wide eyes.

“Oh, yes.” She pulled it out of the pile of dishes in the sink and filled it with water before passing it to Geralt. 

He nodded in thanks, hanging it above the fire to warm. He was so focused on cooking that he didn’t notice the door opening.

“Oh, hello Jaskier,” Ciri said. 

Geralt turned around. It was the same man he had met on May Day; this time he was dressed in a vibrant teal doublet and carrying a lute. He paused, about to set the lute down in a corner, staring at Geralt in confusion. 

“Who on earth are you?” he asked. “Where have I seen you before?”

“I’m a total stranger,” Geralt lied. 

“His name is Geralt,” Ciri offered helpfully.

Jaskier looked around as if he could not entirely understand what was happening. “How did you convince Yennefer to let you cook?”

“He bullied me!” Yennefer complained, voice slightly muffled by the pan. 

Jaskier let out an amused huff of breath, edging past Geralt. “Fetch some more bacon and eggs,” he instructed, clearly ready to take over the cooking.

Geralt did as he asked, hoping to avoid any more questions.

“Why have you come here?” Jaskier asked as Geralt stepped out of his way.

Geralt cast a desperate look around, taking in the clutter, the dust and grime covering every surface. “I’m your new housekeeper.” He tried to put as much confidence into his tone as he could. 

“Are you indeed?” Jaskier asked, raising an eyebrow. “Who hired you?”

“Yennefer did. She’s disgusted by how dirty it is in here.”

Jaskier lifted the pan briefly to shoot Yennefer a questioning look. Yennefer just crackled sulkily.

“Well, if that’s the case, find some knives and forks and clear the table.”

Ciri was already shoving things aside on the table. Geralt didn’t want to mess with the potion bottles strewn about, so he started going through the drawers to see what he could find. It looked as though almost every dish and utensil was piled in the sink. Most of it seemed to be growing _something._ He did manage to find several mismatched forks and two knives, which would have to do, because Jaskier was putting food onto plates.

“Dishes first,” Geralt muttered to himself before going to join the wizard and his apprentice at the table. 

Ciri was smiling. “I don’t remember the last time we had a real breakfast.”

Jaskier was watching Geralt. Geralt focused on his breakfast, not meeting the wizard's curious gaze. The wizard was quiet as he finished eating and then stood abruptly. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to go.” He stalked into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. 

Geralt and Ciri finished their breakfast in silence.“I have work to do,” Ciri said, almost apologetically. “Will you be okay down here?”

Geralt nodded, looking over the kitchen. “I have work to do as well.”

Ciri scampered away, disappearing upstairs. Geralt rolled up his sleeves and set to work.


	5. Which is far too full of washing

Geralt started in the kitchen, tackling the thick layer of dust that covered all the counters—he didn’t want to think about anyone cooking in this room.

Almost an hour after Jaskier had gone into the bathroom, he swept out in a cloud of perfumed steam. His hair was shinier and his doublet seemed to be an even brighter shade of blue. He took one look at Geralt and backed into the bathroom, making a face. 

“Leave those poor spiders alone!” 

Geralt glared at him. “These cobwebs are a disgrace. And a health hazard.”

“Then get those down, but leave the spiders!”

“They’ll only make more webs,” Geralt pointed out. 

Jaskier waved a hand. “And kill flies! Now keep that broom still while I head out—I don’t want cobwebs in my hair.”

Geralt leaned on the broom to wait. Jaskier walked over, picked up his lute case, and then walked to the door.

“If the red blob leads to Creyden, and the blue to Cintra, where does the black take you?”

“What a nosey old man you are!” Jaskier sighed. “That leads to my private bolt hole, and _you_ are not”—he pointed at Geralt—“being told where that is.”

Jaskier turned the knob to green, opening the door to the wide moors. 

“Don’t kill a single spider while I’m away,” Jaskier warned before stepping outside and shutting the door behind him. 

**

Since nobody explained where Jaskier had gone, Geralt assumed that he was off to hunt young people whose hearts he could steal. The idea rankled Geralt, so he continued cleaning with a renewed vigour. 

“I wish you’d stop,” Ciri complained from her seat on the stairs. 

“You’ll be much happier when it’s clean.” 

“But I’m miserable now!” Ciri protested. 

Yennefer grumbled her agreement. “I wish I’d never made that bargain with you.”

Geralt just snorted and continued working. 

**

Geralt wasn’t sure exactly how many hours he had been working, but it seemed as though it would take years to scrub the grime out of the castle. 

Ciri had reappeared periodically as clients knocked on the door. She seemed to view Geralt as some form of impending disaster, and did her best to stay out of sight. That was fine; Geralt wasn’t particularly in the mood to talk to anyone at the moment. He was tired and sore and frustrated. 

Finally satisfied with the kitchen, Geralt turned his attention to the fireplace.

“Oh no,” Yennefer grumbled.

“Hm,” Geralt said, as he set about cleaning the ash and soot surrounding the fire demon. 

“Geralt, I’m going out. Geralt,” Yennefer complained, “get me some firewood!”

“Hold on,” Geralt said, grabbing the tongs.

“Hey, hey, what are you doing?” Yennefer asked, reaching out long flaming tendrils to hold on tight to one of the logs as Geralt picked it up.

“You’ll be fine,” Geralt growled, placing the log over a bucket and turning to continue cleaning out the fireplace.

“I’ll fall!” 

“I’m just sweeping out the ashes.”

“Please,” Yennefer cried, “I’m going out!”

Geralt spared a glance; the fire seemed just as steady as before, so he ignored the litany of complaints and continued working.

“Hurry, please,” Yennefer urged.

“Be quiet, you’re fine,” Geralt told her. He turned, appraising the lower level. It was satisfyingly clean. He grabbed his broom and bucket and started towards the stairs. 

“Wait!” Ciri yelped, racing back from the table to block Geralt from the stairs, “You can’t come up here!”

Geralt leveled her with an unimpressed look. “Whatever you don’t want me to clean, hide it now.”

Ciri’s eyes widened. “Save my room for last?”

Geralt nodded and she scampered upstairs. 

Geralt headed upstairs, looking around in dismay. It was somehow worse up here than it had been downstairs. He was distracted by a large window. All the windows downstairs showed Cintra, but this looked out onto the rolling moors of the waste. The castle was rumbling along a hillside dotted with heather.

“Yennefer?” he called, moving back to the stairs. “Are you the one moving the castle?”

Yennefer grew slightly taller, drawn out of her sulk. “Of course I am! No one else does any work around here.”

“I’m impressed,” Geralt admitted. “You’re a first class fire demon.”

Yennefer blazed up at the compliment, looking as pleased as a fire could manage.

“I like your spark!” Geralt told her before setting back to work. 

**

Jaskier returned late in the evening. Ciri immediately raced over, clinging to his sleeve and complaining about Geralt. She was speaking too rapidly for Geralt to follow, as tired as he was by a full day of work. 

“Jaskier! He’s killing us both!” Yennefer wailed as Jaskier passed the fire on his way to the stairs. 

Jaskier turned his attention to Geralt. “Did you kill any spiders?”

Geralt was feeling achy and tired, not particularly in the mood for the odd whims of a wizard. “No.” He smiled a bit. “They look at me and run for their lives. What are they? The people whose hearts you’ve stolen?”

Jaskier laughed. “No, just spiders,” he said with a smile and then drifted upstairs. 

Ciri sighed. She trotted over to the broom cupboard, disappearing into it and emerging several minutes later with a straw mattress and several blankets. She dragged them into the arched space beneath the stairs.

“You can sleep here tonight,” Ciri said.

“Does that mean Jaskier’s letting me stay?”

“I don’t know,” Ciri snapped, “Jaskier never commits to anything! I was here for six months before he even noticed I was living in the castle and made me his apprentice.” She seemed to soften slightly. “I thought the bed would be better than the chair.”

“Thank you,” Geralt said. He watched Ciri scamper upstairs before laying down on the bed with a relieved sigh and sinking into an exhausted sleep. 

**

The following few days passed the same way. Geralt busied himself with cleaning and found he was almost enjoying himself. He told himself he was looking for clues about the contract between Jaskier and Yennefer, but mostly he was just happy to be able to work at his own pace and not to have to worry about dealing with customers. 

Every time Jaskier came in, Ciri and Yennefer would complain about Geralt but Jaskier didn’t seem to notice them or any changes to the castle. Whatever occupied his mind left little room for anything else.

Geralt was starting to worry about the day that Jaskier would kick him out; it seemed impossible that the wizard would continue ignoring Geralt’s presence.

Working in the bathroom was a monumental task, not helped by the fact that Jaskier spent hours in there every morning before he went out. The packets, jars, and tubes lining the shelves fascinated Geralt. He ended up going through the ones labeled ‘Skin’, ‘Eyes’, and ‘Hair’, wondering if they were parts of the wizard’s supposed victims. They all seemed to be creams and powders and paints. Geralt wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved. 

**

“I had to drain a hot spring dry for you,” Yennefer grumbled.

“Where are the hot springs?” Geralt asked, curious about the range of the magic. 

“Under the Cintran marshes, mostly.” Yennefer raised herself higher in the grate. “When are you going to stop messing about and figure out how to break my contract?”

Geralt shrugged. “How am I supposed to figure it out when Jaskier is never here? Is he always out this much?”

Yennefer shrugged. “Only when he’s after someone.”

**

The discovery of a stepladder and paint gave Geralt a new task, and soon the entire kitchen had been whitewashed. Geralt had also managed to paint Ciri’s room, as the child seemed to have gloomily accepted Geralt as inevitable as a natural disaster. 

“What’s happening here?” Jaskier asked, looking around the kitchen. “It looks so much lighter.”

“Geralt,” Ciri said gloomily.

“I should have guessed,” Jaskier said before disappearing into his room. 

Ciri looked at Yennefer with delight. “He noticed! The guy must be giving in at last!”

Geralt waited until Jaskier set out for the day before heading upstairs. He had been putting off attempting to clean Jaskier’s room out of fear of what he might find, but he had decided that it was a silly fear. It was clear that Yennefer did all of the strong magic while Ciri managed the hackwork. Jaskier seemed to spend all his time gadding about. Geralt hadn’t found him particularly frightening before, but now he felt nothing but contempt for the wizard. 

Geralt arrived on the landing to find Jaskier standing in his doorway, completely blocking her. 

“No, you don’t,” Jaskier said with a pleasant smile. “I want it dirty, thank you anyway.”

“I saw you go out.” Geralt frowned at him.

“I know.” Jaskier grinned. “I wanted you to. I thought you would descend upon me today. And I _am_ a wizard.”

“Hm,” Geralt said, rather than admitting that he honestly had not believed that Jaskier could do anything in particular. “Everyone knows you’re a wizard, but that doesn’t change the fact that your castle is the dirtiest place I’ve ever seen.”

Geralt tried to peer past Jaskier; he could see bookshelves overflowing with strange looking books, piles of clothes and shiny bits of jewelry on the floor. There was no sign of the stolen hearts, but those could easily be under the huge four poster bed. 

“Uh-uh!” Jaskier swung his sleeve up in front of Geralt’s face, “don’t be nosy!”

“I’m not,” Geralt protested.

“Yes, you _are,”_ Jaskier said with an undignified snort. “You are a dreadfully nosy, extremely bossy and appallingly clean old man. Control yourself.”

Geralt glowered at the wizard. “It’s a pigsty.”

“I like my room the way it is,” Jaskier declared. “Now _please_ go downstairs and think of something else to do. I hate quarreling with people.” 

Geralt sighed but did as the wizard instructed. Getting himself kicked out over this wouldn’t be worth it, even if the thought of that room would nag at him. If Jaskier’s room was off-limits, the only area left to clean was the courtyard, so Geralt headed out the back door to survey the mess and start sorting through the trash. 

With a metallic clash Jaskier appeared in the courtyard, almost falling over a large sheet of metal. “Not out here either!” 

Geralt stared at him, nonplussed.

“You are a terror,” Jaskier whined. “Leave this alone. If you move stuff I won’t be able to find any of the things I need.”

That probably meant the box of hearts was somewhere out here, Geralt realized, feeling thwarted. “Cleaning _is_ what I’m here for.”

Jaskier waved his arms. “Then you must think of a new meaning for your life!” He glared at Geralt before taking a deep breath to calm himself. “Now go inside and find something else to play with before I get angry.”

Geralt did not enjoy being glared at. “Of course not! You don’t like anything unpleasant. You’re a slitherer-outer! You just slither away from anything you don’t like.”

Jaskier gave a brittle looking grin. “Well. Now we both know each other’s faults. Go back inside. Now.” Jaskier herded Geralt back inside with a wave, catching his sleeve on a piece of rusty metal. 

Jaskier cursed as he looked at the tattered cuff.

“I can mend it,” Geralt offered. 

Jaskier gave him a look that Geralt couldn’t decipher. “There you go,” the wizard sighed. “How you must love servitude.” He looked down at the tear, running it between his fingers. As the fabric left his fingers the tear has disappeared. “There.” Jaskier looked up again, fixing Geralt with a piercing blue gaze. “Understand?”

Geralt nodded, feeling rather like he had pushed too many boundaries. Jaskier did not follow him in, but he doubted the wizard was still in the courtyard either.

“Why didn’t he kick me out?” Geralt muttered to himself.

“Beats me,” Ciri offered. “I think he goes by Yennefer’s decisions.”


	6. In which Jaskier expresses his feelings with green slime

It had been a peaceful morning. Ciri had been busy working on a spell, while Geralt sat by the fire and worked on mending some of the girl’s clothes. For a pair of magic users, Jaskier and Ciri were almost woefully unable to deal with basic tasks.

“Happy in your work?” Jaskier asked.

“I need more to do.”

Jaskier sighed. “My old doublet needs mending, if you have to feel busy.” 

This seemed to mean that Jaskier was no longer cross, so Geralt relaxed slightly, knowing he wasn’t about to be kicked out at any moment. 

Jaskier had not gone out—for the first time since Geralt had come to the castle—and was working frantically on several spells. He didn’t maintain focus on anything long enough to finish, racing in and out to work on various projects. 

Ciri tried to ask him a few times about the boy he had been attempting to woo, but Jaskier managed to slither out of answering any of the girl’s questions until she eventually gave up. 

Instead they turned their attention back to the spell Jaskier had been commissioned to do for the king. Jaskier had done his best to slither out of that as well, delivering a polite and long-winded reply to the first messenger. When a second messenger had arrived he had somehow convinced Jaskier to take on the task, although he was certainly not pleased about it.

“Why on earth did Priscilla have to get herself lost in the Waste?” Jaskier complained to Ciri. “The king seems to think I’ll do as his new court wizard.”

“Priscilla wasn’t as inventive as you,” Ciri offered.

“I’m too patient and polite,” Jaskier replied gloomily. “I should have charged him more.”

Jaskier was equally patient and polite with his customers in Cintra, but, as Ciri pointed out, the issue in this case was that Jaskier did not charge these people enough. This was brought up after a customer had spent an hour explaining why she could not pay Jaskier, and then again after the wizard promised a wind spell to a sea captain for almost nothing. 

Jaskier managed to avoid the argument by giving Ciri a magic lesson. He was a surprisingly good teacher, patient and kind in his corrections. Geralt found himself listening as he worked, and realized he could learn as well, and perhaps find a way to break his curse on his own. 

Eventually, when it seemed like Jaskier might vibrate out of his skin with all the excess energy, he abruptly got up. “My feet itch. I’m going for a walk.” 

Jaskier picked up his lute and turned the doorknob green-down, stepping out among the heather of the moors above Rivia. 

“His feet itch!” Yennefer complained. “How does he think I feel? Stuck in this stupid grate!”

Geralt looked up from Jaskier’s doublet to glare at the fire demon. “Then give me a hint about how to break your contract.”

“I have given you a hint!” Yennefer said with an outraged crackle.

“Well I didn’t catch it. Give it again.”

Yennefer sighed out a cloud of smoke. “If I give you a hint and say it's a hint, it would be information.”

“Hm.” Geralt returned his attention to the blue-and-scarlet doublet, examining the detailing. “A bit worn, but you are a fine doublet. Built to pull in the girls, no doubt.”

Geralt waited another few minutes until he was sure that Jaskier had really gone. Ciri had been sent out early to deliver a spell, and wouldn’t be back for another hour at least. He set the doublet down carefully and made his way to the front door.

“What are you doing?” Yennefer asked, peering out of the grate.

“Investigating.” Geralt twisted the knob until it was black-down and opened the door. There was nothing outside, just empty space—somehow completely colorless. Geralt tentatively reached into it and felt absolutely nothing for a moment. As he drew his hand back he felt a slight tingling sensation that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. There was some kind of magic on the doorway, so he turned to Yennefer. “Do you know what this is?” 

“I don’t know,” Yennefer said. She seemed just as curious about it. “I only maintain it.”

Geralt considered trying to step into the empty void but realized there was every chance he would not survive the attempt. He shut the door and turned the knob back to green-down, disappointed not to have found anything interesting. Although, Geralt realized, if Jaskier hadn’t come back to stop Geralt from opening _that_ door, he might be able to use this opportunity to get into the wizard's room. He started for the stairs at once.

“He’s locked the door,” Yennefer said, sounding bored now that the door was closed. “He wants me to tell him if you try to snoop again.”

“What does he have up there?” Geralt was frustrated—how was he supposed to find information if he couldn’t get into the wizards room?

“I don’t know.” Yennefer sighed. “I can’t see anything upstairs. I can’t even really see outside the castle—just well enough to know where we are going.”

**

“Jaskier?” Ciri called as she walked inside, “The king—” She trailed off as she noticed that the lute was gone. 

“Oh no.” She sighed, coming to sit next to Geralt. “Not the boy again!”

“Who is the boy?” Geralt asked, not sure if he wanted an answer. 

“Jaskier’s newest…” Ciri trailed off, trying to find the right word.

“Paramour?” Yennefer suggested.

“If you like.” Ciri shrugged. “He’s called Eskel Bellegarde, and Jaskier’s been flirting with him for _ages_ already. I thought he’d fallen in love with Jaskier and it was all over.”

Geralt felt his heart skip a beat. He couldn’t believe this was happening, that his _brother_ was being targeted by a wizard who stole hearts and souls. He tried to suppress his rising panic and dread.

Yennefer cackled. “You read the signs wrong. This boy is being particularly tough—Jaskier thought a few days away might help.”

“Oh gods,” Ciri whimpered. “That’s not good. I was hoping Jaskier might be almost sensible again.”

“Really?” Geralt snapped, finally unable to contain himself. Worry for his brother turned to anger over their callousness. “How can you both talk like that about such terrible wickedness? I suppose I can’t blame Yennefer since she’s an evil demon, but Ciri—”

“I don’t think I’m evil.” Yennefer sounded somewhat wounded at the accusation.

Ciri huffed. “If you knew the amount of trouble we’ve had because Jaskier keeps falling in love like this, you wouldn’t blame us! The lawsuits! And suitors with swords! Not to mention mothers and fathers and _aunts_. Aunts are terribly vicious. And then there are the ones who find out where Jaskier lives—come in here crying and miserable. Jaskier always manages to disappear so we have to try to send them away.”

“I hate the unhappy ones,” Yennefer agreed. “They drip on me.”

Confusion and irritation were quickly taking over the cold feeling of dread. “Hold on. What does Jaskier do to these people? I was told he ate their hearts and took away their souls.”

Ciri giggled nervously. “You must have come from Rivia. Jaskier sent me there to blacken his name when we first set up the castle in the moors. It’s, uh, the sort of thing the aunts usually say?”

“Jaskier’s fickle. He’s only interested until the person falls in love with _him_ and then he’s done with it,” Yennefer said.

“But he won’t rest until he’s made them fall in love with him,” Ciri added. “He’s ridiculous until then, can’t get any sense out of him. It’s better once it’s over.”

“Until they track him down, at least,” Yennefer said.

Geralt scoffed to hide the fact that he was somewhat embarrassed to have believed the rumors. “You’d think he’d be smart enough to give them a fake name.”

“Oh he does,” Ciri said. “He loves giving false names and posing as things. He does it all the time.”

“Well I think it’s wicked and heartless,” Geralt grumbled. 

“He’s made that way,” Yennefer explained. 

Ciri leaned against Geralt’s chair and told her stories of Jaskier’s conquests and the trouble that had followed.

Geralt worked on the doublet, muttering as he went. “So you ate hearts, did you? Why do aunts always put things so oddly?”

**

Jaskier flung the door open, looking more discontented than ever.

“Lunch?” Geralt offered.

“No,” Jaskier said. “Hot water in the bathroom, Yen!”

Jaskier stood moodily in the doorway, and then turned with narrowed eyes to Geralt. “Have you tidied the shelf of spells in here?”

Geralt considered for a moment. He certainly couldn’t admit that he had gone through all of the packets looking for bits of Jaskier’s victims. “I haven’t touched a thing,” Geralt lied and then went to get the frying pan.

“I hope you didn’t.” Ciri frowned at the closed door. 

Yennefer flickered uneasily. “I think he’s tinting his hair. I hope you left those alone, he’s terribly vain.”

“Shut up,” Geralt snapped. “I put everything back where I found it.”

Ciri and Yennefer both fell silent, but Geralt could tell they were still uneasy. They had finished eating and were cleaning up when the bathroom door swung open.

“Geralt!” Jaskier howled as he ran into the room. “Look at it! What has that one-man force of chaos done to my spells?”

Geralt looked up, startled; Jaskier was clutching at his hair—now a vibrant flame red.

“Geralt, you sabotaged me!” Jaskier tugged at his hair, looking distraught.

Geralt tilted his head, appraising. “What a pretty color.”

Jaskier froze, staring at him in dismay. “It’s hideous!” He waved his arms wildly, barely avoiding knocking over a pile of books. “You completely ruined my magic potions in the bathroom!”

“I just organized things, Jaskier. Nothing’s ruined.” Geralt tried to keep his tone soothing, but really, the potions might not have been labeled but every bottle was a different shape—it wasn’t as though he had mixed them together.

“No!” Jaskier was whining now. “Wrong! I specifically told you not to get carried away. You did this on purpose, didn’t you? Wanted me to be miserable too. I shall have to hide until it’s grown out.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Geralt told him.

Jaskier ignored him. “Now I’m repulsive!” He slumped dramatically into the closest chair. “I can’t live like this! Despair! Anguish! Horror!”

Geralt took a cautious step closer. “It’s not...that bad.” As he watched, the red disappeared, changing to a deep chestnut brown. “You should look at it now. This shade is better?” 

Geralt had to admit that the brown actually did look nice, but Jaskier was not interested in being comforted. He slumped over further in his chair, still moaning. Geralt wondered if he was even listening. He considered just leaving until Jaskier had finished his sulking, but he saw the way Ciri was shifting nervously.

“I give up,” Jaskier moaned. “I see no point in living if I can’t be beautiful!”

Before Geralt could say anything in response to _that_ particular ridiculous statement, black shadows started to twist and twine up the walls and roll off the wizard.

“Jaskier! Stop it!” Ciri shouted, running up to stand next to Geralt. “He’s calling the spirits of darkness!” she explained, turning to Geralt. “I saw him do this once before, when a girl dumped him.”

Geralt stared at her. “He’s calling the spirits of darkness because he doesn’t like his hair?”

Ciri shrugged.

“Jaskier!” Geralt snapped, hoping to distract the man. “You’re all right. We’ll just dye your hair back. Calm down.”

Jaskier refused to be consoled. Geralt snarled in frustration, sick of the melodrama and complaining, when really, what did the wizard have to worry about? 

“Fine!” Geralt growled, stepping away from the wizard. “You think you’ve got it bad? I've never once been beautiful in my entire life!”

He steadfastly refused to look at either Ciri or Yennefer as he stomped to the door.

“I've had enough of this place!” he added, slamming the door shut behind him as he stepped out into the ordinary street.

Geralt took a few steps away from the house and then paused to catch his breath. He wasn’t quite sure why he had gotten so upset, he had never cared particularly for his looks before. Perhaps, he thought, it was just frustration over the curse.

He leaned against the building opposite the castle’s entrance to think. If he didn’t go back, Yennefer wouldn’t be able to help with the curse, which meant he would need to find another way to solve the problem.

“Geralt?” Ciri had opened the door a crack and was peering around, as soon as she saw him she darted across the street. “Please come back in! We need your help.”

Geralt thought about refusing for a moment but changed his mind. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Ciri made a face. “Jaskier.” 

She didn’t say anything else, just grabbed his hand and towed him back into the castle. There were horrendous quantities of green slime. It was oozing off of Jaskier in huge clobs and glistening menacingly across the floor. 

“Jaskier! Cut it out, I’m gonna drown!” Yennefer wailed. As soon as she saw Geralt she turned her attention to him. “Please help! He won’t listen.”

Geralt snorted, stomping across the slime covered floor to place a few extra logs around Yennefer to keep the slime at bay. He then turned to survey the wizard. Jaskier wasn’t moving, still curled up in his chair.

“What should we do? Is he dead?” Ciri asked, peering down at Jaskier from the table she had climbed onto.

“Ridiculous,” Geralt muttered. He poked at Jaskier’s shoulder and the man whimpered pitifully.

“He’s fine,” Geralt told Ciri and Yennefer. “Just throwing a tantrum.”

They looked immensely relieved at this news. 

“Come on,” Geralt called to Ciri. “Give me a hand.” He started to drag Jaskier to his feet. The wizard remained unresponsive.

“Get the hot water running,” he told Yennefer. Ciri came over reluctantly to help drag Jaskier into the bathroom and then deposit him in the tub. 

The water seemed to revive Jaskier somewhat. He blinked up at them from under a sheen of green slime.

“Make sure he doesn’t drown,” Geralt told Ciri before heading back out into the main room.

“Now I have to mop again,” Geralt sighed, trudging through the slime to the cupboard to pull out his cleaning supplies. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys the green slime is one of my favorite scenes its just so powerful. I went for something in between the movie and book in terms of what happens to his hair but In the book literally all that happens is his hair gets a /slight/ tint and its the Worst Tragedy Ever


	7. In which the scarecrow returns

Despite the reassurance that Jaskier didn’t actually steal souls or eat hearts, Geralt was still concerned by the idea that the wizard was flirting with his brother. He hoped that Eskel would be sensible enough not to fall in love, but he didn’t want to risk it. He was determined to visit Eskel and warn him. 

Unfortunately, the next morning Geralt could barely move—the rain and chill had gotten into his old bones and he felt achy and miserable. Geralt spent the day planning for his visit to Eskel and feeling sorry for himself, frustrated by the limitations of his new form. 

“Curse the Wizard of the Waste!” Geralt growled when he still felt stiff and sore the _next_ day. This time, though, he was determined not to give up, so he grabbed his stick and started to get ready for the day. He could hear Jaskier singing cheerfully in the bathroom as if he had never had a tantrum in his life. 

Geralt hoped that he would be able to make it out of the house before Jaskier finished, but unfortunately the wizard left the bathroom just as Geralt reached the door. He was dressed in the blue-and-scarlet doublet and the sunlight coming in from the window made him look ethereal. 

“I think my hair looks good this color,” Jaskier said. 

“Do you?” Geralt said, almost tempted to agree—the brown suited Jaskier, made his blue eyes seem even bright—but he wouldn’t give the wizard the satisfaction.

“It goes with this doublet,” Jaskier added. “You’re quite skilled with a needle! You’ve given the doublet more style somehow.”

“Hm.”

Jaskier stopped by the door, turning back to look at Geralt with a small frown. “Are your joints troubling you? Or has something annoyed you?”

“Annoyed?” Geralt widened his eyes and tried to imitate the innocent tone Jaskier often used. “Why would I be annoyed? Someone just filled the castle with horrible slime, scared Yennefer, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should I be annoyed?”

Jaskier laughed, a bright and joyful sound that Geralt told himself quite firmly he did not enjoy. “I apologize.” He turned the knob red down. “The king wants to see me today,” he said. “I shall probably be forced to wait there until evening, but I can do something about your rheumatism when I get back. Can you let Ciri know I left a spell for her?” He smiled brightly at Geralt before stepping out into Creyden. 

“And he thinks that makes it all right,” Geralt muttered as the door shut. In truth, the smile _had_ mollified him. “If that smile works on _me,_ then I can’t imagine what it does to Eskel, who doesn’t know who he really is.” Geralt prepared to leave the house when Ciri came rushing down the stairs.

“I’ve got something very urgent to do!” Ciri said as she raced over to the door. “If the sea captain comes for his wind spell it’s on the bench.” She turned the knob to green and disappeared into Rivia. 

Geralt started for the door again when Yennefer spoke up. “If you are going to be out long, could you leave some logs where I can reach them?”

Geralt turned back to her, curious despite himself. “Can you pick up logs?”

Yennefer responded by stretching out a lilac arm-shaped flame with finger-like flames at the end. “I can almost reach the hearth.”

Geralt sighed but did as she asked, stacking several logs in front of the grate within Yennefer’s reach. 

There was a knock at the door and Geralt cursed under his breath—he just wanted to leave without any more interruptions.

“Is that the sea captain?” Geralt asked, moving to change the knob.

“No.” Yennefer sounded confused. “It’s the castle door, but—”

“Ah, probably Ciri then,” Geralt said. He opened the door and was confronted by a turnip face leering in at her. He stumbled back in shock, staring at the scarecrow hopping along next to the castle.

Yennefer stretched herself further out of the fireplace. “What is it?”

Geralt leaned back out to confirm his suspicions—it was the same scarecrow he had met at the start of his journey. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Yennefer asked.

“My heart,” Geralt muttered. “There’s a scarecrow at the door.”

“What does a scarecrow have to do with your heart?”

“It scared me. And my heart—well, you wouldn’t understand, you silly young demon. You don’t have a heart.”

Yennefer pouted, inasmuch as a fire could. “I do have a heart! It’s down here in the glowing part under the logs. And don’t call me young! I’m much older than you!”

“Hm,” Geralt said, turning to Turnip-Head. “I suppose you might as well come in.”

Yennefer watched in fascination as the scarecrow fit itself through the door and started slowly hopping around the room. “That’s a very powerful curse.” 

“On the scarecrow?” Geralt frowned at it.

“Yes.” Yennefer nodded. “I believe it might actually belong to the Wizard of the Waste as well.”

“Well, then I suppose we ought to stick together, Turnip-Head.”

“Is that a good idea?” Yennefer asked. “We don’t know what kind of curse it is.”

“You didn’t know what my curse was either, and you let me in,” Geralt pointed out.

“I suppose,” Yennefer said.

**

Cirilla, when she returned, seemed to take the scarecrow entirely in stride. Jaskier _did_ seem concerned when he came in sometime later, eyeing Turnip-Head warily. 

“What is a scarecrow doing in my castle?” 

“She’s a friend,” Geralt told him.

“A...friend?” Jaskier asked with a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t know you had one of those.” 

“Hm.”

Jaskier picked up the skull from its shelf and then turned his attention to Yennefer. “Could you have restrained him, my friend?”

The skull chattered its teeth at him. Jaskier quickly returned it to the shelf looking startled. Geralt, who had never seen the skull move before, also shifted away from the skull.

“Is something wrong?” Ciri asked.

“Yes,” Jaskier sighed, flopping dramatically into a chair. “I have to find someone to blacken my name to the king.”

Ciri crossed the room to sit next to Jaskier. “Was there something wrong with the spell we did?”

“No, it worked perfectly,” Jaskier sighed. “Which is exactly the problem.” 

“Why?” Ciri asked.

“King Fredefalk is trying to pin me down to do more projects.” Jaskier put his head in his hands. “I think he wants to make me the Royal Magician.”

“What do you think he wants you to do?” Ciri asked tentatively.

“He hasn’t said specifically yet, but I think it’s something to do with his missing daughter. Apparently they fought before she left and now people are talking. The king wanted me to volunteer to go look for her. And then I foolishly said I didn’t think Wizard Priscilla was dead, and then he wanted me to look for her as well.”

“Why don’t you want to look for the princess?” Geralt asked. “Don’t think you could find her?”

Jaskier looked up. “There’s no call to be rude when I’m in _distress_.”

“Hm.”

Jaskier huffed at him. “Of course I would be able to find her! That’s the problem. They both went out into the Waste, and there’s a certain gentleman in the Waste who is very bad news. He promised to fry me alive last year and I’m not particularly looking forward to _that_.”

Geralt narrowed his eyes. “You jilted the Wizard of the Waste!”

Jaskier pulled himself upright in his chair, affecting a look of tragic sorrow. “That’s not the way to put it. I was quite fond of him for a time.”

“Should we move the castle?” Ciri asked. 

“I am tempted to move the castle to a rock a thousand miles away, with both the king and the Wizard after me.”

“And what happens to your Eskel Bellegarde if you move so far away?” Geralt asked, voice cold. 

“Oh, that will probably be over by then,” Jaskier said. “If I could just get the king to leave me alone…” Jaskier muttered before he visibly brightened, an excited gleam in his eyes. “I know!” He pointed at Geralt. “You can blacken my name to the king! You can pretend to be my loving father and plead for your boy.” Jaskier gave his most charming smile, the one that had likely dazzled the Wizard of the Waste and possibly Eskel as well. “You shouldn’t have any trouble with that.”

Geralt stared at the dazzling smile and didn’t respond. This, he decided, was where he slithered out. This was the final straw. Tomorrow, he would leave the castle to go and warn Eskel and then he would find some other way to break his curse. 


	8. In which Geralt leaves the castle in several directions at once

Jaskier was in a fine mood the next morning, dressed in the blue-and-scarlet doublet. “Ciri, get started on that spell today,” he instructed. “And if anyone comes from the king tell him I’m away on urgent business.”

“Are you?” Ciri asked.

“I’m going to see Eskel, but you certainly shouldn’t say _that_.” He picked up his lute and opened the door onto the wide hills of the moors. 

Geralt waited until he was sure that the wizard was gone before he started gathering up his things. It was troublesome that Jaskier was also heading to Temeria; he had hoped to be able to warn Eskel before the wizard visited again. There was nothing to be done for it now, and Geralt hoped that it would be alright, as long as he could avoid meeting Jaskier on the road. Ciri seemed utterly absorbed in the spell she was working on, but Geralt still muttered, “Stuffy in here.”

Ciri still wasn’t paying attention so Geralt continued. “Terribly stuffy.” He opened the door and waited while Yennefer brought the castle to a halt. He clambered down and looked at the surroundings—he could see the sandy road leading from Rivia to Temeria just downhill from the castle. He started walking towards Temeria, trying to ignore the pang of sadness he felt about leaving Yennefer and Ciri behind. 

He had made it to the road when he heard shouting behind him and saw Ciri bounding down the hill after him. 

“What are you doing?” Ciri asked. 

“I’m just going to my great-nephew. He’s called Eskel Bellegarde.” He gave her a meaningful look, hoping she would catch on.

“Where does he live?” Ciri asked, as if she thought Geralt might not know. 

“Temeria.”

“That’s ten miles away!” Ciri protested. “I promised Jaskier I’d make sure you rested! I can’t let you go out.”

Geralt frowned.He didn’t like this sudden concern over what he did. Just because Jaskier wanted him to visit the king didn’t mean the wizard could boss him around. 

“Besides! Jaskier’s gone to Temeria,” Ciri added.

“I’m sure he has,” Geralt grumbled.

“I’m sure you’re anxious about this boy, since he’s your great-nephew,” Ciri said. “I get it, I really do! But I can’t let you go.”

“I’m going,” Geralt insisted.

“But if Jaskier sees you he’ll be upset. And he’ll be mad at me as well for letting you go.” Ciri tugged on Geralt’s arm, trying to guide him back to the castle. 

Geralt started to pull his arm away when Ciri had an idea.

“Oh! There’s a pair of seven-league boots in the cupboard.” She continued to tug and Gearlt allowed her to tow him back up the castle. 

“Seven leagues is twenty one miles; I’ll be halfway to Cintra in two steps.”

“It’s ten and half miles per step,” Ciri said. “That would be Temeria almost exactly. We can each take one boot and go together—then I won’t be breaking my promise to Jaskier about watching you! And if we leave now, we might make it there before Jaskier.” She seemed cheered by this thought and Geralt didn’t have the heart to protest. 

Ciri fetched the boots from the cupboard and Geralt began to have doubts again. They were enormous and misshapen.

“You put your foot in, shoe and all.” Ciri said, but even she looked doubtful as she carried the boots to the door. “These are just prototypes, though. The ones we ended up making for the king were lighter and, well, more boot-shaped.”

Geralt followed Ciri to the doorstep where they both sat and put one foot into a boot.

“Now, just aim for Temeria before you put your boot down,” Ciri instructed. They both stood on the foot still in a normal shoe and swung around until they were pointed in the direction of Temeria. “Step!” Ciri instructed.

The landscape rushed past them in a blur of color, details lost as the boot carried them across the moors in an instant. The rushing wind stopped as suddenly as it began, leaving them in a field of buttercups in the middle of the Temerian common. Unfortunately, the boot was so heavy that Geralt stumbled as he landed.

“Don’t put—” 

Ciri’s warning was lost as Geralt zipped another ten and a half miles past Temeria. 

“Fuck.” Geralt snapped. He hopped around to face Temeria and then carefully stepped forward. This time, the boot landed in a mud puddle and stuck; Geralt lost his footing and thumped into the buttercups. 

“Are you okay?” Ciri asked.

“Hm.” Geralt extracted his foot from the boot, giving it a disapproving look, and then followed Ciri across the common to Triss Merigold’s house. 

“Nice place,” Ciri said, shoving the boots into Triss’ hedge. The house was one of the largest in the village and the yard was crowded with flower beds. They made their way up the path to the front door. 

“Good morning,” Triss said as she opened the door. 

“This is Eskel Bellegarde’s great uncle,” Ciri introduced. “I brought him here to see Eskel.”

“Oh, I thought you looked familiar!” Triss smiled. “There’s quite a family likeness. Please, come in. Eskel is busy at the moment, but I can brew some tea while you wait.” She pulled the door open wider and a large border collie squeezed past her out the door. 

“Oh, stop her!” Triss gasped. “She shouldn’t be out now!”

The dog darted about the yard, whining as it did. Geralt and Ciri both chased after the dog. Ciri, able to run much faster, managed to throw her arms around the dog’s neck just as it ran around a corner of the house. Geralt hobbled after to find Ciri pulling the dog backwards and making a strange face. She jerked her head toward the orchard that lay behind the house. Geralt peeked around the corner of the house, and there was Jaskier, kneeling on one knee in front of Eskel. 

Jaskier looked ardent and noble. Eskel was smiling lovingly at him. Geralt felt rather miserable as he watched them. 

“He must have used a speed spell,” Ciri said, sounding equally dismayed. 

Triss caught up to them, carrying a collar and a leash. “Bad dog!” she said as she put the collar on. “I’ll put a spell on you if you do that again.” The dog blinked at her and submitted to being led into the house without any more struggle. “Thank you,” Triss said to Ciri and Geralt. “She won’t stop trying to bite Eskel’s visitor.”

The dog cast a woeful look over her shoulder in the direction of the orchard.

“That dog might have the right idea,” Geralt grumbled. “Do you know who Eskel’s visitor is?”

“Of course,” Triss chuckled. “The Wizard Pankratz, Jaskier, or whatever he calls himself. Eskel and I are pretending we don’t know. It amused me when he first showed up, calling himself Alfred Dandelion, because I could see he didn’t remember me, although I remembered him from his student days. I was taught by Nenneke as well, you see, and she was so proud of Jaskier.”

“Don’t you know about his reputation?” Ciri interrupted. 

“Most of it is just talk,” Triss said. Ciri looked disappointed that her work to blacken Jaskier’s name had not been convincing enough. “Anyway, Eskel is very clever—he has the potential to end up in the same league as the Wizard of the Waste, only in a good way, and Jaskier can teach him far more than I could. If Nenneke were still teaching...but she’s not. So Jaskier courting Eskel seemed like an excellent chance. I don’t think Eskel was terribly keen on the idea at first, but he’s seemed more amenable recently.” Triss looked very pleased with herself.

Geralt frowned. “Someone told me Eskel was fond of someone else.”

“He felt sorry for her, you mean.” Triss lowered her voice conspiratorially. “She has a terrible malady, and it's too much for any one to handle. I told the young woman so. I’m sorry for her myself, but—”

“Hm?” Geralt managed. 

“But it's a fearsomely strong spell. Very sad,” Triss continued. “I had to tell her there was no way someone of my abilities could break a spell cast by the Wizard of the Waste. Jaskier might be able to break it, but she can’t ask him, not when they’re both interested in Eskel.”

Ciri, who had been anxiously watching the corner of the house in case Jaskier appeared, stood up. “I think we better get going.”

Triss nodded with a smile. “If you’re sure you don’t want to stay.”

“No, we really ought to go,” Geralt agreed. He was feeling increasingly queasy and he couldn’t imagine running into Jaskier or Eskel right now.

Ciri hooked her arm around Geralt’s. “Don’t want to lose you again.”


	9. In which Ciri has trouble with a spell

Back in the castle, Ciri set to work on the spell that Jaskier had left for her. Geralt started mending his spare shirt, as it had begun to fray, and his other clothes weren’t much better. He wished that he had taken the time to pack better before setting off on this quest. He put the shirt down and looked over to Ciri. “Is there any chance that Jaskier is properly in love this time?” Geralt asked, not sure what answer he was hoping to receive.

Yennefer snorted purple sparks up the chimney.

“No.” Ciri didn’t seem to have any doubt.

“How do you know?”

“Did he forget to spend at _least_ an hour in the bathroom this morning?” Ciri looked to Yennefer.

“He was in there for two hours. Putting spells on his face, the peacock!” Yennefer cackled.

Ciri nodded. “There’s your answer. The day Jaskier forgets to do all of that will be the day I believe he’s really in love.”

Geralt sat in his chair, considering this, remembering the way Jaskier had looked in the orchard. Geralt was tempted to go and tip all of Jaskier’s beauty potions down the sink, but that would only result in more slime. Still, he felt petty and a little vindictive, so he took the pink-and-cream jacket that Jaskier had been wearing during the slime incident and began cutting out the least stained pieces to use to patch his own clothes.

Ciri came up a moment later and patted him on the shoulder, before tossing a dozen pages of notes onto Yennefer’s flames.

Ciri watched as Yennefer burned up the pages, and scraped some soot off the chimney. It became clear that she was having trouble with the spell Jaskier had left her. Yennefer craned out to watch her as Ciri took a withered root and added it to the pile of soot. Without a word, Ciri crossed to the door and stepped out into Cintra. She returned twenty minutes later with a seashell and put that with the soot and root.

“What do you think she’s doing?” Yennefer asked Geralt. Geralt just shrugged; he certainly didn’t know enough about magic to understand what she was trying to do.

Ciri didn’t seem to notice, ripping up pieces of paper and adding them to the pile.

“I feel bad about spying on Jaskier,” Ciri said, dumping all of her ingredients into a mortar and mashing it together. “He may be fickle in love but he’s always been good to me. He took me in when I was just an unwanted orphan sitting on his doorstep in Cintra…”

“How did that happen?” Geralt asked.

“My parents were lost at sea. I had to leave our home because I couldn’t pay rent, and I tried to live on the streets but people kept turning me away. Eventually I thought if I went somewhere everyone was too scared to go, I would be left alone. Jaskier was just starting out in Cintra then, and everyone was terrified of him. I slept on his doorstep for a few nights, and then one day Jaskier opened the door and I pretty much fell inside. He said I could wait while he went to get food. I went in and started talking to Yennefer because I had never met a demon before.”

“She told me her troubles and dripped on me,” Yennefer added. “Didn’t seem to occur to her that I might have troubles as well.”

Ciri stuck her tongue out at Yennefer. “I don’t think you have any. You just complain a lot.”

“What happened when Jaskier came back?” Geralt asked. He couldn’t imagine Jaskier willingly taking in a child. It seemed like far more responsibility than he would care for.

“Well, you know how he is. He didn’t tell me I could stay, but he didn’t tell me to go, either. I decided to be useful if I could—I started hiding away money so Jaskier wouldn’t spend it all, things like that.”

There was a small explosion in the mortar. Ciri sighed and set out to gather new ingredients.

“I made a lot of mistakes when I started, but Jaskier was always very nice about it. And I think I do help with money. Jaskier always wants to spend so much on clothes. He says no one’s going to hire a wizard who looks like he can’t make money at the trade.”

Yennefer snorted a laugh. “That’s just because he likes clothes.”

“It’s not just clothes—last winter we were almost out of firewood and he went and bought that skull and the lute,” Ciri muttered as she returned her attention to her bowl of ingredients. “Geralt, I’m stuck on this spell. Do you think you could help me?”

“I can take a look,” Geralt offered. “But I don’t know anything about magic.”

Ciri eagerly passed over the piece of paper. “See what you think.”

Geralt looked at the page. The words were typed in a bold font and it didn’t look anything like the other books and papers he had seen around the castle. He read:

> “ _Go and catch a falling star,_
> 
> _Get with child a mandrake root,_
> 
> _Tell me where all past years are,_
> 
> _Or who cleft the Devil’s foot._
> 
> _Teach me to hear the mermaids singing,_
> 
> _Or to keep off envy’s stinging,_
> 
> _And Find_
> 
> _What wind_
> 
> _Serves to advance an honest mind._
> 
> _Decide what this is about_
> 
> _Write a second verse yourself”_

Geralt read through it twice—it wasn’t like any of the spells he had looked at before. It didn’t help that Ciri kept chiming in with explanations.

“Jaskier told me that advanced spells have a puzzle in them—I thought that meant that every line was a part of the puzzle. I used soot with sparks for the star and a shell for the mermaid—things like that.” Ciri frowned at the paper. “None of it works!”

Geralt shrugged. “It seems like a set of impossible things to do.”

“That can’t be right,” Ciri argued. “Then no one would be able to do the spell.”

“You could ask Jaskier,” Geralt suggested.

Ciri sank lower in her seat. “I already feel bad about spying on him. I want to get the spell right to make up for it.”

Geralt sighed but looked over the spell again. “Let’s start with ‘Decide what this about.’ that should start things.”

“No...I think it’s the sort of spell that reveals itself as you go along. When you write the second verse it makes the spell work.”

Geralt thought that was a rather ridiculous way to do things—how were you to know you wanted to do the spell if you didn’t know what it was meant to _do_. Still, Ciri looked so eager that he didn’t want to disappoint her. “Could we ask Yennefer? Yennefer—”

“No!” Ciri interrupted. “I think Yennefer is part of the spell—it says ‘Tell me’ and ‘Teach me’—I think that must mean Yen.”

“Hm.” Geralt frowned. “But surely Yennefer would know who cleft her foot!”

Yennefer flared up in outrage. “I don’t _have_ any feet! And I’m a _demon,_ not a devil.” She retreated under a log, muttering angrily to herself.

Geralt and Ciri spent the rest of the afternoon discussing possible interpretations of the spell without any luck. Eventually, frustrated, they gave up and had dinner. After, as they cleaned up, Geralt had an idea.

“Why don’t we try _doing_ what it says? Where’s the best place to catch a shooting star?”

“The marshes outside Cintra?” Ciri suggested. “It’s flatter there. Could we catch one? They go so fast.”

“We can use the seven-league boots,” Geralt offered.

“Oh yes!” Ciri sprang to her feet. “Let’s go and try!”

Geralt grabbed his stick and a coat. As Ciri changed the doorknob to blue-down, the skull started clattering on the bench.

Yennefer blazed up dramatically, purple sparks flickering. “I don’t want you to go!” she called.

“We’ll be right back,” Ciri soothed.

They stepped out into a brisk spring evening in Cintra and walked quickly through the outskirts of the city and into the marshland beyond it. Geralt could hear the roaring of the sea in the distance. Mist glimmered over the marsh, reflecting the moonlight. Above them the stars twinkled.

Geralt and Ciri stood, each with a boot in front of them, and waited for one of the stars to move. They waited for an hour without anything happening.

Ciri sighed. “Maybe there won’t be any falling stars. May isn’t the right time for it.” She scuffed at the grass in front of her. Despite this, neither suggested they leave, so they fell back into silence.

“What do we do about the mandrake root?” Ciri asked after another half hour had passed.

“Let's worry about this part first,” Geralt said, too busy trying to keep his teeth from chattering to spare much thought to the spell.

“You could go home, Geralt,” Ciri offered.

Geralt considered this and almost agreed when one of the stars started moving. “There!” Geralt shouted.

Ciri shoved her foot into the boot and took off across the marsh. Geralt followed a moment later. They crossed a great stretch of marsh and then stopped—Geralt stabbed his stick into the mud to stop himself and jerked his foot out of the boot. Ciri was several yards ahead of him, a dark shape against the black of the night.

The falling star was close, a little descending flame just beyond Ciri’s reach. Geralt stumbled through the marsh towards Ciri and the star. Ciri was stalking closer, arms out wide to catch it.

The star was looking back at them nervously. It was made of light, bright enough to light up a white ring on the ground around it—and it had big, anxious eyes looking back at Ciri.

“What is it? What do you want?” the star cried in a shrill voice.

Geralt didn’t have the breath to speak, still gasping from his run.

“I only want to catch you!” Ciri said, holding her hands out towards the star. “I won’t hurt you!”

“No!” the star crackled. “That’s wrong!” The light flared up brighter as it struggled to move farther away. “I’m supposed to die!”

Ciri froze for a moment before darting closer. “I could save you if you’d let me catch you!”

The star crackled again. “No! I’d rather die!” With that, it dove into the closest marsh pool. Ciri made a desperate grab for it but it was too quick—it splashed into the water with a sizzle.

Geralt blinked as his eyes adjusted to the darkness again. “That was sad.”

“Yes,” Ciri agreed. “Let’s go home. I’m sick of this spell.”

They spent twenty miserable minutes searching for the boots before making their way back to Cintra.

“I think I will have to ask Jaskier about the spell,” Ciri sighed as they approached the house. “I hate giving in, but I can tell I’ll never be able to figure it out on my own. At least Jaskier might be more help now that Eskel has given in to him.”

That thought did absolutely nothing to improve Geralt’s mood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a whole pinterest board dedicated to this fic. Jaskier's jacket is inspired by [this](https://pin.it/20TbmM9)


	10. In which Yennefer promises Geralt a hint

Jaskier emerged from the bathroom while Geralt was making breakfast, flopping gracefully into a chair, groomed and smelling of apple blossoms. 

“Dear Geralt,” he said. “Always busy. You were hard at work yesterday, weren’t you? Why have you made a jigsaw puzzle out of my jacket? Just a friendly question.”

“You covered it in jelly,” Geralt said dryly. “I’m remaking it.”

Jaskier huffed. “I could have done that with magic.” He flashed a smile. “I can also make you a pair of seven-league boots in your size if you’d like. It’s amazing how you can take a step ten and a half miles long and always land in mud.” 

“Yes,” Geralt agreed. “A person my age needs a lot of exercise.”

“Interesting,” Jaskier said. “And when I tore my gaze away from Eskel yesterday I could have sworn I saw you snooping about.”

“Triss is a family friend. How was I supposed to know you were going to be there?”

“You have an instinct. Nothing is safe from you,” Jaskier said, sounding amused. “If I were to court someone on an iceberg in the middle of the ocean, I’m sure you would show up there at some point. In fact, I’d probably be disappointed _not_ to see you.” 

“Heading to an iceberg today?” Geralt said icily. “From the look on Eskel’s face yesterday there’s nothing to keep you there.”

“You wrong me, Geralt.” Jaskier sounded deeply injured. Geralt cast a suspicious glance towards him. He was looking sad and noble. “Years will pass before I leave Eskel. Anyway, I’m going to see the king today—satisfied?”

“Hm.” Geralt was not sure he believed any of this, although Jaskier did leave red-down into Creyden. 

Geralt sat down and looked at the pieces of the pink-and-cream jacket, feeling somewhat guilty for taking it apart. 

A knock on the door distracted him. “Cintra door,” Yennefer announced. 

Geralt hobbled over and pushed the door open. There was a cart outside and the man leading it asked if Geralt had anything that might stop the horse throwing shoes. 

“I’ll… see.” Geralt moved as quickly as he could over the grate. “What do I do?” 

“Yellow powder, fourth jar on the second shelf,” Yennefer whispered. “Those spells are mostly about belief. Don’t look uncertain when you give it to him.”

Geralt poured the yellow powder into a square of paper as he had seen Ciri do, and twisted it closed. He passed it over to the man. “There you are, that’ll stick the shoes harder than any nails.” 

After that, Geralt found himself spending the rest of the morning selling charms and spells with Yennefer’s help. Most were simple things, and Geralt felt confident that even if Yennefer was wrong it wouldn’t cause any large problems. The only troublesome customer was a young noble who couldn’t have been much older than Ciri.

“Mister Wizard, please! I have to fight a duel at dawn tomorrow. Can you give me something to make sure I win?” the boy asked. “I’ll pay anything!”

Geralt looked over his shoulder to Yennefer; she made a face to indicate they did not have such a spell ready.

Geralt turned back to the boy, leveling him with a stern look. “That would be cheating. Dueling is wrong to begin with—I won’t help you cheat.”

“Please, can you give me something that will let me have a fair chance at least?”

Geralt considered him—he was small and clearly afraid. He had the hopeless look of someone who always loses.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Geralt said with a sigh. He made his way over the shelves and considered his options. After a moment he pulled down the jar labeled CAYENNE and poured a heap onto a paper. Geralt noticed the boy peeking around the door anxiously so he placed the skull next to the paper. “You know more about this than I do.” He told the skull. As he twisted the paper closed, he whispered: “Make this a fair fight, understand? A fair fight.” 

Returning to the boy, Geralt gave him another stern look. “Throw this in the air when the duel starts and it will give you the same chance as the other man. After that, it’s up to you to win.”

The boy was immensely grateful, and left the shop whistling happily.

Geralt sank into the chair across from Yennefer. “God, I feel like a fraud. But I would really like to be there for that fight.”

“So would I!” Yennefer crackled in amusement. “When are you going to release me so I _can_ go see things?”

“When I’ve gotten even a hint about your contract,” Geralt said.

“You _may_ get one later today,” Yennefer told him.

**

Ciri returned in the early afternoon and Geralt filled her in on the clients he had helped. When Jaskier shouldered the door open with his arms full of parcels, Ciri was caught up in a fit of giggles over the duel spell.

Jaskier backed into the door to close it and leaned back in a tragic attitude. “Look at you! Ruin stares me in the face and not one of you, not even Yennefer, can spare time to say hello!”

“I’ve never said hello in my life,” Yennefer told him as Ciri jumped guiltily to her feet.

“Is something wrong?” Geralt asked. 

Jaskier sighed dramatically. “That’s better—at least one of you is pretending to notice me. How kind of you to ask, Geralt. Yes, something _is_ terribly wrong. The king has officially asked me to find his daughter—with a strong hint that destroying the Wizard of the Waste would also be helpful—and you all sit there and laugh.”

Geralt stood immediately, worried that Jaskier might be about to produce more slime. “I’ll make some tea.”

“Is that all you can do in the face of tragedy? Make tea?” Jaskier exclaimed. His expressive gestures were hampered by the packages he carried. “No, don’t trouble yourself. I’ve come back laden with stuff for you, so you can at least show polite interest.” Jaskier passed several packages to Geralt and another to Ciri. 

Geralt frowned at the packages, trying to figure out why Jaskier would have bought him anything. After a moment he opened the first package to find a fine jacket and trousers in a light grey with embroidered leaves and flowers along the collar and down the front. It was a great deal fancier than anything Geralt had ever thought to wear, but still quite understated compared to anything Jaskier owned. The other packages contained a simple black shirt and a pair of black boots.

Ciri frowned at her own gift—a lovely dress in pale blue with delicate lace along the collar. “You must have spent every coin in the purse.” She glared at Jaskier. “I don’t need this.”

“Well, I can’t send you and Geralt to blacken my name to the king in rags,” Jaskier said easily. “The king would think I didn’t look after my old father properly.” Jaskier turned his attention to Geralt, suddenly seeming much more earnest. “Well, Geralt, are the boots the right size?”

Geralt looked at him suspiciously. “Are you being kind or cowardly? Thank you very much, but I won’t blacken your name.” 

Jaskier gasped. “What ingratitude!” He spread both arms in an expansive gesture. “Let’s have green slime again! After that, I’ll be forced to move the castle a thousand miles away and never see my lovely Eskel again!”

Geralt glowered at him, but he knew that he wouldn’t risk his brother’s happiness. And he really didn’t want to deal with slime again. “You haven’t actually asked me to do anything,” Geralt pointed out, crossing his arms. “Just told me I would be doing it.”

“Well, you _are_ going to, aren’t you?” 

“Fine.” Geralt sighed. “When do you want me to go?”

Jaskier bounced on his heels, all traces of the green slime mood gone. “Tomorrow afternoon. The king’s expecting you.”

“Hm,” Geralt said, wishing he hadn’t agreed quite so quickly.

“I want you to be careful about it,” Jaskier said. “So that the king will keep hiring me for things like the transport spells, but won’t trust me with anything like finding his daughter. You could tell him that I’ve angered the Wizard of the Waste and tell him that I’m a good son, but in such a way that makes it seem I’m quite useless.”

Geralt didn’t think that would be too difficult. Still, he listened to Jaskier’s detailed explanation of exactly what he thought Geralt should say. 

Ciri, meanwhile, was hovering at Jaskier’s side trying to ask him about the odd spell. 

“Actually, I think you ought to practice, Geralt. Before you see the king,” Jaskier said. “You can be quite… tactless? And rather abrupt and rude.”

“Do you still want me to help you?” Geralt asked.

“Yes, yes!” Jaskier waved a hand. “I just meant, it might be good to have you meet my old tutor first, to prepare.”

“Hm.” 

Jaskier seemed to realize he couldn’t push Geralt any further, so he turned to Ciri. “Where was your problem?”

Ciri spread the page with the spell on the workbench. “I tried it as a puzzle and tried just doing what it says,” she explained. “But Geralt and I couldn’t catch a falling star…”

“Great gods!” Jaskier seemed to be trying to fight back laughter. “Ciri, this isn’t the spell I left you. Where did you find it?”

“On the bench,” Ciri said. “In a pile of things that Geralt had put there. It was the only spell.”

“Geralt strikes again!” Jaskier said with a grin. He moved over the bench to shuffle through the pile of things. “No, the proper spell isn’t here.” He tapped the skull thoughtfully. “This your doing, friend? I have a sense you come from there, just as the lute does. Geralt, dear?”

“What?” 

“Busy, unruly Geralt. Did you turn the doorknob black-side-down to snoop?”

“Yes,” Geralt said.

Jaskier nodded. “You opened the door, and the thing Ciri thinks is a spell got through. Didn’t you notice it doesn’t look like spells usually do?”

Ciri shrugged. “Spells often look odd. What is it then, if not a spell?”

Jaskier scanned the lines again. “‘Decide what this is about.’ Oh. Hold on, I’ll show you.” He turned and darted up the stairs.

“I think we wasted our time in the marsh last night,” Geralt said. Ciri nodded gloomily. 

“I’m sorry,” Geralt told her. “It’s my fault for opening the door.”

“What was out there?” Ciri asked.

Before Geralt could answer Jaskier came bounding down the stairs. “I don’t have the book here. Ciri—” He looked upset. “Did you say you went to catch a shooting star?”

Ciri nodded, still looking upset. “I did. It was scared and fell into a pool and drowned.”

“Thank goodness!” Jaskier seemed to relax somewhat.

“It was sad,” Geralt protested.

“Sad?” Jaskier rounded on Geralt, eyes flashing with anger. “It was your idea, wasn’t it? That was the stupidest thing she’s ever done in her life! She’d have been more than _sad_ if she’d managed to catch the thing! And you—”

Yennefer flickered. “What’s all the fuss about?” she demanded. “ _You_ caught one yourself.” 

“Yes! And I—!” Jaskier turned to glare at Yennefer. Then he took a great sighing breath and visibly composed himself. He turned back to Ciri, tone turning desperate. “Ciri, promise you’ll never try to catch one again.”

“I promise!” Ciri agreed. Then, trying to distract Jaskier from his distress, she asked, “What was the writing, if not a spell?”

Jaskier looked back at the paper. “It’s called ‘Song’—and I suppose that’s what it is. This isn’t the whole thing though, and I can’t remember the rest. I think the next verse was important…” He sighed. “I’d better take it back and see.” 

Jaskier walked over and turned the knob black down. “I know Geralt will find a way to follow, so Ciri, you might as well come too. This way I can keep an eye on you.”

He opened the door to the nothingness and stepped through. Ciri followed on his heels. 

“Geralt!” Yennefer called before he could step through the doorway. “You had your hint.”

“Did I?” Geralt asked, but he was in too much of a hurry to focus. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Geralt's [doublet](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/d4/c5/95/d4c595498ded0a6797e1da08ad39d881.jpg)


	11. In which Jaskier goes to a strange country in search of a spell

The nothingnesses was only an inch thick; after passing through it they found themselves standing in a drizzly gray evening on a cement path leading to a garden gate. Beyond that was a flat, hard-looking road of some sort, lined on both sides with eerily identical houses. The door they had stepped out of now led to one of the square houses.

“When you’ve finished snooping…” Jaskier called. He was misted with the drizzle and the odd lanterns along the road gave him an angelic glow.

Geralt trudged down the path towards him.

“We need to dress in keeping with the place.” Jaskier’s fine doublet blurred as if the rain had become a fog. When it came into focus again, the dangling sleeves were gone and the whole thing was baggy and shabby looking.

Ciri was dressed in a pair of form fitting trousers and a blouse that hung off one shoulder. Geralt frowned at the clothes and then looked down to see his own clothes had changed—he was wearing dark blue trousers in an odd material and an incredibly soft knitted sweater. He wondered if he could convince Jaskier to let him keep the sweater.

When Jaskier turned, the back of his jacket had the mysterious words ‘WELSH RUGBY’ written on it.

Jaskier pulled out a small flat key and unlocked the door. Geralt followed close behind Jaskier, not wanting to be accused of breaking in. There were people inside, and as Jaskier opened a door Geralt realized the voices were coming from colorful moving pictures on a large box.

“Julian!” exclaimed the man sitting across from the box. He looked annoyed to see Jaskier.

“Uncle Julian!” a small girl shouted, flinging herself at Jaskier and clinging to his leg.

“Marilka!” Jaskier cried, “How are you, cariad?” He scooped the girl into his arms and they started speaking very quickly in a language Geralt didn’t recognize.

Around the conversation with Marilka, Jaskier said, “This is my niece, Marilka, and my brother, Ferrant Lettenhove. Ferrant, this is Ciri and Geralt.”

Ferrant stood and shook hands with them both, a disapproving frown on his face.

“Quiet now, Marilka!” Ferrant snapped. “Julian, are you staying long?”

“Just for a moment,” Jaskier said, placing Marilka back on the ground.

“Vespula isn’t in yet,” Ferrant glared at Jaskier who looked away with a grimace.

“Oh no, what a pity!” Jaskier didn’t even try to sound sorry. “We really can’t stay. Just wanted to ask you something that may sound silly—has Peter lost a piece of English homework recently?”

“Funny you should say that. He was looking everywhere for it last Thursday. His new English teacher is very strict—puts the fear of God into them about getting their work done on time. He couldn’t find the homework anywhere, all he found was an odd piece of writing—”

“What did he do with that?” Jaskier asks.

“Told him to hand it in to his teacher, Miss Vigo, to show her he at least tried.”

Jaskier sighed. “Did he?”

“I don’t know. Ask Peter, he’s upstairs with that machine of his.”

Jaskier waved to Geralt and Ciri. “Come on.” He took Marilka’s hand and led them upstairs and into a room where two boys were sitting in front of a smaller box showing diagrams and animated writing.

“Peter!” Jaskier called.

“Don’t interrupt!” one of the boys said. “He’ll lose his life.”

At that, both Geralt and Ciri retreated towards the door, not wanting to risk the boy’s life. Jaskier, unperturbed at killing his nephew, walked over the wall and pulled out the roots of the machine. The picture on the box vanished and both boys swore creatively.

The second boy spun around. “Marilka! I’ll get you for that!”

“Wasn’t me!” Marilka yelped, clinging to Jaskier.

“What’s up, Peter?” Jaskier asked as the boy turned to glare at him.

“What do you want? Plug it back in!” Peter said.

“There’s a warm welcome,” Jaskier said, twirling the roots in his hand. “I’ll put it back once you answer my question.”

“Uncle Julian,” the boy protested, “I’m in the middle of a game!”

“A new one?” Jaskier asked.

“No. One I got for christmas. Mum and Dad won’t get me another until my birthday.”

“Well, if you’ve done it before, you shouldn’t mind stopping. Besides, I’ll bribe you with a new one.”

“Really? Another one that nobody else has?” Peter brightened considerably.

“Sure. First take a look at this.” Jaskier held up the odd paper.

“It’s a poem,” Peter said with dismay.

“That’s the one we had for homework last week,” the other boy offered. “It’s about submarines.”

“Oh! It’s my lost homework. Where did you find it? Was the funny writing yours? Miss Vigo thought it was interesting and took it home with her.”

“Thank you. Do you know where she lives?”

“On Cardiff Road. Over the tea shop,” Peter told him. “When will you give me the new game?”

“When you remember the rest of the poem.”

“No fair!” Peter whined. “I can’t even remember the part we got. That’s just playing with my feelings.”

Jaskier laughed, pulling a flat packet out of his baggy pants.

“Thanks!” Peter cried, and then turned back to the magic box. Jaskier put the bundle of roots back in the wall and hurried back towards the stairs.

Geralt lingered behind, distracted by the words appearing on the screen, as Peter read aloud: “You are in an enchanted castle with four doors. Each door opens on a different dimension…”

When he made it to the stairs he found Ciri halfway down, looking supremely uncomfortable. Jaskier was at the foot of the stairs arguing with his brother.

“What do you mean you sold all my books?” Jaskier asked.

“Don’t keep interrupting!” Ferrant hissed. “I’ve told you before I’m not a storehouse for you junk! You’re a _disgrace_ to me and Vespula, messing about in those closes instead of buying a proper suit and looking respectable. Taking up with riffraff and layabouts, bringing them to my house? You had all that education and you didn’t even get a decent job. You just hang about wasting all that time you spent at college. Wasting all those sacrifices other people made!”

Listening to Ferrant go on and on, Geralt began to understand where and _why_ Jaskier had acquired the habit of slithering out of things. Ferrant was the type of person who made you want to sneak out of the closest door. Jaskier was trapped now, backed up against the stairs with Ciri and Geralt behind him.

“...never doing an honest day’s work, never getting a job I could be proud of!”

Geralt took a deep breath and then gently moved Ciri aside so that he could stop down the stairs, looking as stately as he could. “Come, Jaskier, we really must be on our way.” He tried to sound as grand and important as he could. “While we stand here, money is ticking away and your servants are probably just about finished with the gold.” Geralt turned a brief and dismissive look to Ferrant. “It was _so_ nice to meet you. But we must rush, Jaskier is such a busy man.”

Ferrant took a step back, looking baffled. Geralt gave her a stately nod and pushed Jaskier towards the front door.

Jaskier glanced back at the last moment. “Is my car still in the shed, or did you sell that too?”

“You have the only set of keys,” Ferrant snapped.

They didn’t wait for a goodbye. Jaskier slammed the door behind them before heading towards a smaller square building.

Geralt sincerely wished he could forget what happened next. They rode in a horseless carriage that went at a terrifying speed—growling and shaking the whole way—up and down several of the steepest hills Geralt had ever seen. Jaskier seemed utterly at ease but Geralt could see Ciri had her eyes squeezed shut.

Luckily, the ordeal was over quickly. They had arrived at a row of buildings crammed together. Jaskier approached a building and pressed a small button. They waited for a moment and then the door was opened by Miss Vigo. For a strict school teacher, Miss Vigo was astonishingly young and good-looking. She was slender, with dark skin and short curly black hair. The only thing that suggested fierceness about her was the direct and clever way her eyes seemed to sum them up.

“I’ll take a guess that you may be Julian Lettenhove,” Miss Vigo said, sounding amused and sure of herself.

Jaskier was startled for a moment but then he put on his most charming smile. “And you must be Miss Vigo,” Jaskier said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I accidentally took my nephew’s English homework instead of a rather important piece of paper I had with me. I believe Peter gave it to you as proof he wasn’t slacking.”

“He did,” Miss Vigo agreed. “Come in, I still have it.” She led the way up the stairs to a tiny and immaculately tidy living room.

“Won’t you sit down?” Miss Vigo said to Geralt. Geralt nodded, still feeling shaky from the ride over. He took a moment to look over the room. Many of the things were strange but the wall of books and piles of paper on the table, at least, didn’t seem odd.

“How is it you know who I am?” Jaskier asked.

Miss Vigo smiled. “You’ve caused quite a lot of gossip in town.”

Jaskier arranged himself so that he was leaning on a table in a way that looked as appealing as possible. “And what has the gossip told you?”

“That you disappear and turn up unpredictably, for one thing.” Miss Vigo was sorting through the papers on her table and didn’t even turn to look at Jaskier.

“What else?” Jaskier asked. He was tracking Miss Vigo’s movements in a way that made Geralt angry. On Eskel’s behalf of course.

“Many things. Few to your credit.” She finally extracted a yellowing piece of paper. “Here it is. Do you know what it is?”

“Of course.”

“Tell me?”

Jaskier took the paper, and tried to take Miss Vigo’s hand along with it, but she managed to extract her hand. Jaskier smiled charmingly and handed the paper to Ciri. “You tell her.”

“It’s the spell!” Ciri brightened. “Oh, I can do this—for enlargement, right?”

Miss Vigo narrowed her eyes. “That’s what I thought.” Her tone turned accusing. “I’d like to know what you were doing with such a thing.”

“Miss Vigo, if you’ve heard so many rumors, surely you know that I wrote my doctoral thesis on charms and spells.” Jaskier tried another charming smile. “You’re acting as if you think I’m practicing black magic! I assure you, I’ve never worked any kind of spell in my life.”

Geralt couldn’t suppress a snort at his lie. Jaskier cast him an irritated look.

“The spell is for study purposes only. It’s old and rare, that’s the only reason I wanted it back.”

“Well you have it now.” Miss Vigo still seemed suspicious. “And in exchange, the homework sheet?”

Jaskier pulled out the poem and passed it to her. “This poem, it’s been bothering me—I just can’t remember the rest.”

Miss Vigo sighed. “I have the book here if you want to refresh your memory.”

“Please,” Jaskier agreed. “Miss Vigo, would you consider coming out for supper with me tonight?”

“I would not. I don’t know what you’ve heard, Mr. Lettenhove. But I still consider myself engaged to Miss Caprice—”

“Never heard of her,” Jaskier interrupted.

“My fiancee,” Miss Vigo explained. “She disappeared a few years ago.” There was a pause in which none of them quite knew what to say. “Did you want me to read the rest of the poem?”

“Please,” Jaskier said, unrepentant. “You have a lovely voice.”

“Then I’ll start with the second verse, since you have the first one there.” She did a wonderful job reading it, melodiously fitting it into the rhythm of the first:

> _“If thou beest born to strange sights,_
> 
> _Things invisible to see,_
> 
> _Ride ten thousand days and nights_
> 
> _Till age snow white hairs on thee._
> 
> _Thou, when thou returnest, wilt tell me_
> 
> _All strange wonders that befall thee,_
> 
> _And swear_
> 
> _No where_
> 
> _Lives a person true, and fair._
> 
> _If thou—_ ”

Jaskier had gotten very pale. “Thank you. Stop there. I won’t trouble you for the rest. Even the good man is untrue in the last verse, isn’t he?”

Miss Vigo lowered the book and Jaskier forced a smile. “We ought to be going. Unless you’ve changed your mind about supper…?”

“I have not,” Miss Vigo said. “Are you feeling well?”

“Absolutely!” Jaskier said as he hustled Geralt and Ciri out of the apartment and back into the horrible horseless carriage. Jaskier was tense and quiet and the carriage roared back the way they had come.

“What’s wrong?” Ciri asked. Jaskier pretended he hadn’t heard, so she tried again after they had finished locking the carriage back into its shed.

“Oh, nothing,” Jaskier said, waving a hand dismissively. “The Wizard of the Waste has caught up to me with his curse, that’s all. It was bound to happen eventually.” He was twitching his hands as if he was calculating something. “Ten thousand. That would bring us to Midsummer Day.”

“What’s happening on Midsummer?” Geralt asked.

Jaskier looked startled for a moment by the question. “The time I’ll be ten thousand days old. And _that_ is when I’ll have to go back to—” he shuddered dramatically— “Valdo Marx.”

“What will he do?” Geralt asked.

“I shudder to think,” Jaskier said. Then, more to himself than Geralt— “If I avoid mermaids and don’t touch a mandrake root…”

As he spoke he opened the front door of the Welsh house and, inside, was the familiar kitchen of the castle.

“He caught up to us,” Jaskier said as he fed Yennefer a log.

“I know. I felt the curse latch on,” Yennefer replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original poem has the line "lives a woman true, and fair" rather than person but a. that doesn't work for the fic and b. not interested in the sexist implications so


	12. In which Geralt becomes Jaskier’s old father

Geralt was not excited as he waited for Jaskier and Ciri, dressed in the fine clothes that Jaskier had provided. He did feel that he looked rather stern and formidable in the black clothes, but he felt a great deal of dread about this whole ruse.

“You look very stately!” Ciri admired. She herself was wearing a lovely gown instead of the usual slightly grubby trousers and shirt she preferred.

“He does me credit,” Jaskier said as he entered the room wearing a glittering golden doublet. “Except for that awful old stick.”

Geralt glared at him. “Some people are thoroughly self-centered.” 

Jasker gasped in offense.

“I need this stick for moral support.” Geralt told him. It wasn’t exactly untrue; there was something comforting about the metal wolf carved at the top.

Jaskier rolled his eyes dramatically but did not argue. He turned and led them through the door, which opened from a dilapidated old stable in Creyden. 

It was bakingly hot in the city and Geralt discovered being old in the heat was significantly worse than any of his prior experiences. 

“By the way,” Jaskier said, “Nenneke will call you Mr. Pankratz. Pankratz is the name I use here.”

“Why?” Geralt asked.

“For disguise,” Jaskier said, as if it should have been obvious. “Pankratz is a lovely name, much better than Lettenhove.”

“Hm.” Geralt considered arguing the point, but it hardly seemed worth it. “Should I call her something more formal?”

“No, she hates that. Nenneke will be fine.”

**

Nenneke’s house looked more like a temple than a house. Geralt considered asking and then decided he probably did not want to know. An elderly woman in a fine dress opened the door, smiling indulgently at Jaskier. She passed them on to a younger woman who led them ceremoniously up the stairs. 

Geralt was beginning to see why Jaskier had suggested this as practice; he felt as though he were already in a palace. 

The younger woman led them into an ornate sitting room. Everything looked to be of the highest quality, though not overly decorated. 

Nenneke was sitting in a chair in the center of the room, leaning forward and supporting herself on a cane inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She was one of the most imposing and intense people Geralt had ever seen.

“Ah, my dear Jaskier,” she said, holding out one gloved hand.

Jaskier gave an elaborate bow, leaning down to kiss her hand. The effect was ruined by the hand behind his back waving frantically towards Ciri. After a moment Ciri realized that she was supposed to stand by the door with the other girl. Ciri moved back across the room, seeming relieved to be further away from the frightening woman. 

“Nenneke, allow me to present my old father,” Jaskier said, smiling as he waved his hand toward Geralt.

Geralt glowered at him, not pleased with the introduction. Or with the idea of getting closer to the woman. Jaskier had to flap his hand at Geralt as well.

“Charmed,” Nenneke said with a slightly terrifying smile. “Delighted.” She held her hand out to Geralt. 

The idea of bending over to kiss her hand seemed like a difficult prospect so he simply placed his hand on hers. The hand under the glove felt so cold that Geralt was honestly surprised that Nenneke was alive. 

“Forgive my not standing up, Mr. Pankratz. My health is not good.” She sighed. “Forced me to retire from teaching three years ago. Please sit, both of you.”

Geralt lowered himself gingerly into the chair opposite Nenneke. Jaskier sprawled gracefully into the third chair.

“I am eighty-six,” Nenneke told them. “How old are you, my dear Mr. Pankratz?”

Geralt was a little taken aback by the question. “Ninety.” It was the first high number that came into his head. 

“So old?” Nenneke asked. “How lucky you are to move so nimbly still.” There was something in her tone that put Geralt on edge.

“Oh yes,”Jaskier said with a wave of his hand. “He’s so wonderfully nimble that sometimes—” he glared at Geralt—“there’s no stopping him.”

Nenneke gave him a look—the kind of look that suggested she would have been a formidable teacher. 

“I am talking to your father,” Nenneke said disdainfully. “I imagine he is as proud of you as I am. We are the two who had a hand in forming you—you might say you are our joint creation.”

Jaskier pouted. “Don’t you think I did any of it myself? Put in a few touches of my own?”

“Hm.” Nenneke considered him. “A few, and those not altogether for my liking. Now, why don’t you go sit on the terrace? You won’t want to sit here and hear us talk about you.”

Jaskier looked very much like he would, in fact, like to stay and hear what they had to say. He did get up, though, sending a warning glare to Geralt and then ushering Ciri out with him. 

Nenneke turned her attention back to Geralt. “That boy is going bad.”

“What?” Geralt felt that Jaskier had surely become bad long ago.

“Take his whole appearance,” Nenneke said. “His clothes!”

“He is always careful about his appearance,” Geralt agreed.

“And I see no harm in that, but why would he be walking around in a charmed doublet?”

“A charmed… doublet?” Geralt asked.

“Mhm. An attraction charm—very well done, I do have to admit that. It’s barely detectable, even to my trained eye, since it seems to have been darned into the seams—that renders him almost irresistible.” Nenneke sounded reluctantly impressed. “But it represents a downward trend towards the black arts which must surely cause you some fatherly concern, Mr. Pankratz.”

Geralt thought about the blue-and-scarlet doublet. He hadn’t noticed anything particular about it as he had darned the seams, but Nenneke was the expert on magic, so he supposed she must be right in her assessment. 

Nenneke learned forward on her cane, her gaze sharp and appraising. Geralt felt even more nervous. “My life is nearly over,” Nenneke announced. “I have felt death creeping closer for some time now.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Geralt tried to sound kind, although he was finding it hard to control his tone under Nenneke’s hawk-like gaze.

“I assure you it is. That’s why I wanted to meet you, Mr. Pankratz. Jaskier was my last pupil, and one of the best I ever taught. He has twice the imagination and twice the abilities of my previous student—Wizard Priscilla, rest her soul—and I knew that while he had some character faults, he was a force for good. But what is he now?”

Geralt wasn’t entirely sure if his input was required for this conversation. Evidently not, as Nenneke continued— “Something has happened to him, and I would like to put it right before I die.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I must rely on you to tell me that. I worry that he has gone the same way as the Wizard of the Waste. He is close in power, if not more powerful, than Jaskier. It seems as though those of extraordinary power cannot resist an extra, and often dangerous, stoke of cleverness which results in a fatal flaw and begins a moral descent.”

Nenneke was quiet, watching Geralt with an intense focus. Geralt tried to resist the urge to fidget.

“Do you have any idea what it might be?” Nenneke asked.

Geralt remembered Yennefer’s complaint, that the contract between them wasn’t doing either of them any good.

“He’s made a contract with his fire demon,” Geralt offered. “I don’t know the details.”

Nenneke sat back in her chair. “That would be it. You must break the contract.”

“I don’t know how,” Geralt protested. 

“Surely your strong paternal feelings and your own magical gift will tell you how.” Nenneke announced. “I’ve been looking at you, you might not have noticed—”

“I’ve noticed.” 

“—and I like your gift.” Nenneke continued, as if Geralt hadn’t spoken. “It brings life to things. Your stick, for example—you’ve talked to it enough that it’s what a layman might call a magic wand.” 

Geralt wondered if Nenneke had perhaps lost her mind in her old age. 

“I don’t think you will find it hard to break the contract,” Nenneke concluded.

“I would need to know the terms,” Geralt pointed out. “Did Jaskier tell you I was a wizard?”

“He did not. There’s no need to be coy; I have experience in these things.” Nenneke offered a smile that did nothing to make Geralt feel at ease. “I don’t know much about contracts with demons, nor do I want to. I suspect the same thing has happened to the Wizard of the Waste—he made a contract and the demon has taken control of him. Demons do not understand good and evil—it is not something that matters to them. They accept contracts if the human offers something valuable—something only humans have. In exchange, the human gets additional power to add to his or her own.”

“Hm.” Geralt considered this information, wondering what it was that Jaskier had given Yennefer.

“I must bid you farewell. I must rest.” As she said that the door opened and the page girl arrived to lead Geralt back out of the room. 

Geralt sighed in relief as he left the room. Nenneke had been more than he was expecting. He was more than a little impressed that Jaskier had managed to have her as a teacher. 

As he descended the stairs he felt recovered enough from Nenneke’s personality to consider the things she had said. Nenneke said that Geralt had magic. Oddly enough, Geralt accepted this without any trouble. It made a certain amount of sense, and explained the popularity of some of the items he had worked on when he was still at the shop. It might even explain the odd behaviour of the Wizard of the Waste. For a moment, Geralt felt this new knowledge settling comfortably, as if he had always known it. Then, he abruptly remembered the blue-and-scarlet doublet and almost tripped down the stairs at the horrible realization that _he_ was the one who had charmed it. Geralt braced a hand against the wall, overwhelmed with dread at what that suit could do, and a bit of guilt that Nenneke believed Jaskier responsible. 

Jaskier was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with Ciri. Geralt glanced appraisingly at him. He was wearing the doublet—Geralt couldn’t see anything different about him, but perhaps, he thought, as the one who cast the spell, it wouldn’t work on him.

Jaskier looked worried when he saw Geralt. “Are you okay? You look awfully pale…I don’t think you should see the king. I’ll go and blacken my own name.”

Geralt couldn’t quite find the words, there was something _odd_ about the way that Jaskier was looking at him, but Geralt couldn’t begin to guess what it meant.

“I can say that my wickedness has made you ill,” Jaskier suggested. “It could be true, from the look of you.”

Geralt finally snapped out of it; he couldn’t risk Jaskier going to see the king. If the king commanded that Jaskier go after the Wizard, and Jaskier was caught, Geralt’s own chances of being young again would be gone. “No, it’s fine. After Nenneke, the king will seem like an ordinary person.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nenneke is one of my all-time favorite characters from the books—she just 100% will not tolerate anyones BS and I love her for that


	13. In which Geralt blackens Jaskier’s Name

“Don’t worry,” Jaskier said, “I’ll follow behind you in disguise.” 

He stepped back into the alley and disappeared. 

Geralt watched for a long moment, wishing he’d had time to say that having Jaskier follow along in disguise made him worry a great deal more. 

“Should we go?” Ciri asked, worrying at the sleeve of her new dress. 

Geralt nodded and followed Ciri towards the palace. “Why do I feel like this isn’t going to work?” he muttered, looking around to see if he could spot Jaskier. “I wonder what he disguised himself as.”

He tried to pay attention as he walked, but his body was not happy about the heat or the distance he needed to walk. “Can’t be a pigeon, he’s too flamboyant for that,” Geralt grumbled to himself. 

He was thoroughly irritated by the time he reached the castle, and the enormous set of stairs did nothing to improve his mood. He puffed his way up, muttering curses at the Wizard of the Waste for forcing him into this old body. Inside the castle, they were led through a dizzying maze of halls and lobbies. Eventually they were led into an anteroom where Ciri was told to wait. Geralt was ushered through the double doors, and the person doing the ushering announced, “Your Majesty, here is Mr. Pankratz.”

The king was sitting on a rather plain-looking chair, and was dressed more modestly than Geralt had expected—Geralt actually felt somewhat overdressed.

“Well, what does Wizard Pankratz’s father wish to see me about?” the king asked. 

In the face of the king, Geralt forgot every careful phrase and delicate language that Jaskier had told him to use. But he had to say something. “He sent me to say he’s not going to look for your daughter.”

Geralt stared at the king. The king stared back. 

“Are you sure?” the king asked. “He seemed quite willing when I talked to him.”

That, at least, Geralt had an answer for. “He lied. He didn’t want to annoy you but he’s a slitherer-outer.” 

“And he hopes to…slither out of finding my daughter?” the king said slowly, seeming to be considering the situation. “Why don’t you sit.” 

Geralt awkwardly sat in the only other chair. It was quite far from the king, and he almost wished he could have stayed standing. Geralt wracked his mind for something that he could say to blacken Jaskier’s name quickly so that he could leave as soon as possible. “Well, you can see what he’s like—only a coward would send his old father to plead for him.”

The king tilted his head. “It is an unusual strategy. I told him I would make it worth his while if he agreed.”

“He doesn’t care about money,” Geralt said. “And he’s afraid of the Wizard of the Waste—he put a curse on my...son, which has just caught up with him.”

“Then he has every reason to be scared,” the king said with a shudder. “But please, Mr. Pankratz, tell me more about your son.”

For a moment Geralt’s mind was so blank that it seemed as if Jaskier had no faults, which was _ridiculous._ “He’s fickle, careless, selfish, and overdramatic,” Geralt said, feeling as though he was off to a good start. “Half the time it seems like he doesn’t care what happens to anyone else, as long as he’s fine—but then I find out just how kind he’s been to someone. Then I thought he was only kind when it suited him, only to find out he undercharges poor people.” Geralt shrugged a little helplessly. “He’s a mess.”

“My impression was that Jaskier is an unprincipled rogue with a silver tongue and a clever mind. Would you agree?”

“Yes!” Geralt agreed. “But you left out how vain he is and—” Geralt stops, frowning. The king looked satisfied, as if he is hearing exactly what he wanted to and Geralt has the sinking feeling that this has all gone terribly wrong. 

“Thank you, Mr. Pankratz. You’ve taken a weight off my mind. Jaskier agreed to look for my daughter so readily that I worried I’d made the wrong choice—that he was the type who couldn’t resist showing off or who would do anything for money. You’ve shown me that he is just the person I need.”

Geralt just managed not to curse at the king, although _fuck_ would have been an appropriate response to the situation. “He sent me to tell you he wasn’t,” Geralt growled.

“And you did that. But I will be frank with you—I need my daughter back quite badly. Not just because I am fond of her, or because people are suggesting that _I_ killed her. No, the fact is, my daughter, Renfri, is a brilliant fighter, and with Nilfgaard about to declare war on us, I need her back.” The king was quiet for a moment and then leaned back in his chair. “The Wizard of the Waste threatened me as well. All reports say that Renfri went into the Waste. I think the Wizard took Priscilla as bait for Renfri. It follows that I need a fairly clever and unscrupulous wizard to get her back.”

“Jaskier will just run away,” Geralt warned. 

“I don’t think he will.” The king gave another smug smile. “I think that he sent you as a last resort, because he was desperate. This shows me that Jaskier will do what I want if I make it clear that his last resort has failed.”

“I’m not sure that’s right, Your Majesty.” 

The king looked completely confident in his assessment. “Tell Wizard Jaskier, Mr. Pankratz, that I am appointing him Royal Wizard with our royal command to find Princess Renfri before the year is out. You have our leave to go now.”

He held his hand out to Geralt. Geralt managed to climb to his feet. He wondered if he was supposed to kiss his hand, but since he felt more like beating the king over the head with his stick he shook the king’s hand and gave a creaking bow. 

“Fuck,” Geralt hissed as he left the room. He stopped, realizing that he had no idea how to get out of the palace on his own. Just one more thing that had gone wrong. 

“Can I help you, Master Wizard?” 

Geralt turned to see the boy who had wanted help with a duel; his eyes were still red and watering. “Oh! So the spell worked.”

The boy smiled ruefully. “It did. I disarmed him while he was sneezing. He’s suing me now…” Then his face brightened into a smile. “But my dear Jane has come back to me! Now, is there something I can help you with? I owe you a great deal.” 

Geralt nodded, explaining that he wasn’t sure how to get out—or to where Ciri was waiting. The boy, who introduced himself as the Count of Catterack, said that Ciri would be brought to the entrance and then led Geralt out to the palace steps. 

Geralt hobbled down the stairs, and then waited. After several moments when neither Jaskier or Ciri appeared, Geralt decided he would return to the castle. He was tired and hot and frustrated that he had failed to convince the king. 

Of course, Geralt had not spent much time in Creyden and found it impossible to navigate his way back to the castle’s disguised entrance. After almost an hour of wandering Geralt found his way back to the street where Nenneke lived. Geralt was relieved to have found a landmark and turned down the street, hoping to ask one of the maids for directions. His steps faltered as he spotted a figure outside of Nenneke’s house. 

The Wizard of the Waste, Valdo Marx, was coming up the street toward him.

Geralt wasn’t sure how he recognized Valdo, as he looked quite different—instead of orderly chestnut curls, his hair was long and wild. He was dressed in a light blue flowing jacket, a far cry from the gaudy suit he had worn before. Geralt almost stopped, but forced himself to continue walking. He didn’t think Valdo would remember him, just one of the hundreds of people he’d cursed. 

The Wizard came floating up the street, smiling. “Why, it’s Mr. Bellegarde.” He laughed. “I never forget a face, especially not one that I made myself. What _are_ you doing here? If you’re thinking of calling on Nenneke, you can save yourself the bother—she’s dead.”

“Dead?” Geralt repeated.

“Yes, dead,” Valdo said. “She refused to tell me where someone I want to find is. She said, ‘Over my dead body!’ so I took her at her word.”

Geralt was suddenly glad for how tired and annoyed he was, or he might have had trouble lying to the Wizard. “I don’t know who this person is that you’ve killed. But that makes you a murderer.”

The Wizard tilted his head to the side. “I thought you said you were going to call on Nenneke?”

“No. You said that,” Geralt pointed out.

“Then where were you going?” 

Geralt was tempted to tell the wizard to mind his own business, but that would have been asking for trouble. “To see the king.”

The Wizard snorted. “Why should the king see you?”

“I made an appointment,” Geralt ground out. 

“Then you’re going in the wrong direction.” 

“Oh?” Geralt didn’t even need to pretend to be surprised, as turned around as he was. “I must have gotten turned around. I’ve been a little vague about directions ever since you cursed me.”

Valdo laughed heartily. “Then come with me. I’ll show you the way.”

Geralt suppressed a sigh; it didn’t seem like he had another option. He trudged wearily after the Wizard. “Why did you do this to me?”

“You were preventing me from getting information I needed,” he said. “Of course, I got it in the end.”

Geralt was mystified. He couldn’t think of a single thing Valdo would have wanted to know from him. He was wondering if it would do any good to point out that there must have been some mistake, when Valdo laughed again. “I daresay you didn’t even know you were. You know Wizard Jaskier, don’t you?”

“Only by hearsay,” Geralt lied. “He eats girls and he’s as wicked as you.” He felt rather cold as he said it.

“There you are,” the Wizard announced as they arrived back at the palace. “Are you sure you can manage all those stairs?”

“If you’re so concerned, why don’t you make me young again?” 

“That wouldn’t be nearly as fun.” Valdo grinned. “If you do manage to see the king, remind him that his grandfather sent me to the Waste and I bear a grudge for that.”

Geralt nodded and started up the stairs, since the Wizard apparently planned to wait until he was all the way at the top. As soon as he made it through the grand arch, Geralt ducked around a shadowy corner to catch his breath, ignoring the concerned looks of the guards.


	14. In which a royal wizard catches a cold

Geralt managed to talk his way into having a coach take him back to the castle’s Creyden entrance. 

Ciri ushered Geralt inside. “Where have you been? I’ve been worried and Jaskier’s been terribly upset—”

“I’m sure he is,” Geralt agreed, suddenly nervous.

“—because Nenneke is dead,” Ciri finished.

Jaskier approached, looking pale and depressed. He was holding a scroll with the royal seal stamped on it.

Geralt was surprised not to find any green slime as he entered the castle. “Everything went wrong,” he admitted. “I tried to blacken your name and the king wouldn’t listen to reason. Then I met the Wizard of the Waste on his way back from killing Nenneke!”

Jaskier leaned on the mantle with a sigh. “Behold the new Royal Wizard. My name is very black.” Then, to both Ciri and Geralt’s surprise, he started to laugh. “And what did you do to the Count of Catterack? I should never have let you near the palace!”

“I did blacken your name!” Geralt protested, because otherwise he might have to pay attention to the way his heart sped up at the sound of Jaskier’s delighted laughter.

“Oh, I know. It was my miscalculation,” Jaskier said once he had calmed down. “Now, how am I supposed to go to poor Nenneke’s funeral without the Wizard knowing? Any ideas, Yen?”

While Jaskier seemed to be more upset about Nenneke than anything else, Ciri was very concerned about Valdo Marx. 

“I had nightmares all night,” she confessed, leaning back against Geralt’s legs. “Where’s Jaskier?”

Geralt shrugged. Jaskier had gone out early, without his lute, and the door was turned green-down, but even Yennefer didn’t know more than that. 

“Don’t open the door to anyone,” Yennefer warned. “The Wizard knows about all of the entrances except for Cintra.”

This news alarmed Ciri so much that she spent the rest of the morning fetching planks from the back yard and wedging them against the door. 

Half an hour later, the doorknob turned black-down and began to bounce as though someone was trying to force it open. 

Ciri clutched at Geralt’s arm. “Don’t be scared,” She said. “I’ll keep you safe.” 

They huddled together as the door banged against the boards several more times. It stopped and they both relaxed fractionally. Then the boards exploded inwards with a resounding bang. Yennefer plunged into the bottom of the grate and Ciri darted into the broom cupboard, leaving Geralt alone as the door slammed open and Jaskier stomped inside. 

“This is a bit much, Geralt!” Jaskier yelled. He was soaking wet and looked bedraggled and sad. “I do live here.”

“Where have you been?” Geralt asked. Looking at the black-down doorknob, Geralt thought he knew exactly where Jaskier had been: to visit Miss Vigo in that charmed suit. 

“Standing in the rain,” Jaskier replied, then sneezed. “None of your business. What were those planks for?”

“It was me,” Ciri admitted, creeping out of the cupboard. “The wizard—”

Jaskier huffed. “I know what I’m doing, Ciri. I have so many misdirection spells out that most people couldn’t find us at all. It should take the Wizard about three days. Yennefer, I need a hot drink.”

Yennefer rose back up before sinking down rapidly when Jaskier approached. “Don’t come near me like that! You’re wet!”

“Geralt,” Jaskier pleaded. 

“What about Eskel?” Geralt asked. 

“Oh, come on,” Jaskier sighed. He shook himself and the water fell off in a neat ring on the floor. Jaskier stepped out the circle completely dry. “Better?” he asked Yennefer, who cautiously emerged from her hiding place. 

Jaskier made himself tea and then sat as close to Yennefer as he could. He spent the rest of the morning discussing moving the castle with Ciri and Yen. Geralt set to work mending the pink-and-cream jacket—he wanted to repair it as soon as he could so that he could get the charmed doublet away from Jaskier. 

“I don’t think we need to move the Cintra entrance,” Jaskier said. “I do want the moving castle well away from where it has been, though, and we ought to move the Creyden entrance.”

“What about the black-down entrance?” Ciri asked.

“That stays,” Jaskier said as he conjured a handkerchief.

Geralt rolled his eyes. Of course the door that led to Miss Vigo would be left alone. 

Someone knocked on the door, and Geralt noticed that Jaskier looked just as startled and worried as Ciri. Neither of them answered the door. 

“I must have been mad, going to all that trouble for Jaskier yesterday,” Geralt muttered to the jacket. 

As the day progressed, Jaskier summoned a vast quantity of handkerchiefs. As his voice grew hoarse he started to look more and more miserable. “Why is it whenever I go to Wales I come back with a cold?” Jaskier moaned. 

Geralt snorted.

“Did you say something?” Jaskier rasped.

Geralt couldn’t suppress his irritation the fourth time Jaskier lamented his cold. “Perhaps if you didn’t run off to go courting in the rain you wouldn’t be feeling so ill. Maybe you should focus on your job for the king.”

“You don’t know everything I do.” Jaskier sniffed. “Would you like me to write a list before I go out? I _have_ looked for Princess Renfri. Courting isn’t the _only_ thing I do when I go out.”

“When have you looked?” Geralt asked.

“Oh, you are nosy.” Jaskier sighed. “I looked when she first went missing. I was curious to see why she had come out this way when Wizard Priscilla had gone into the waste.” Jaskier conjured another wad of tissues. “I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.” He stood and tottered pathetically to the stairs. “Bury me beside Nenneke.” 

Geralt applied himself to sewing harder than ever—this would be a good chance to get the blue-and-scarlet suit off Jaskier before it caused any issues with Miss Vigo. 

“Help me, someone!” Jaskier called from upstairs. “I’m dying from neglect.” 

Ciri put aside her spell and started running up and down the stairs fetching things for Jaskier. People kept knocking on the door as well, startling Geralt and Yennefer. They would pound on the door for several minutes before realizing they were being ignored and went away again. 

“Jaskier wants a bacon sandwich,” Ciri reported. “Can you ask Yennefer?”

Yennefer sighed. “He’s not dying.”

“I know,” Geralt agreed. “But I’ll give you the rinds to eat if you let me cook.”

They managed to eat lunch before Ciri needed to go and check on Jaskier again. When she came back down she looked nervous but determined. “I need to go into Rivia to get some things for moving the castle.”

“Is it safe?” Geralt asked.

Ciri nodded, grabbing a dusty velvet cloak from the cupboard. She threw the cloak on and transformed into a burly man with a long red beard. “Jaskier thinks I’ll be safe like this. It’s a misdirection spell as well as a disguise.”

Peace descended on the castle. Jaskier realized that Geralt wouldn’t be running about for him and remained silent. Geralt realized that this would be a perfect opportunity to go and visit Eskel without Jaskier knowing. 

The seven-league boots were not in the cupboard. Geralt growled in frustration as he turned everything out looking for the boots. Jaskier must have taken them to make sure that Gearlt couldn’t follow him.

Someone started knocking on the door as Geralt was putting everything away, and didn’t stop knocking. “Is it the Wizard?” Geralt asked.

“No,” Yennefer replied. “It’s the castle door. Someone must be running along beside us.”

“Can you tell who it is?”

“No. Just that it wants to come in quite badly. I don’t think it means any harm.”

Geralt couldn’t help his curiosity—and the banging was starting to give him a headache—so he took the second velvet cloak from the cupboard and went to open the door. Yennefer stared at him for a long moment before bursting into loud crackling laughter. Geralt wondered what the cloak had turned him into, but it didn’t seem important. He opened the door and a large greyhound leaped off the hillside next to the castle and into the room. Geralt dropped the cloak and backed away from the dog. He was suspicious of anything so determined to get into the castle, and greyhounds weren’t reassuring to look at. 

The dog bent its back and hoisted itself onto its hind legs. Geralt was about to scream for Jaskier when the dog exerted what was clearly a great deal of effort and turned into a woman. She had long blond hair and a pale face drawn into a frown.

“Came from Temeria!” the dog woman said. “Eskel sent me—Eskel very unhappy. Wanted. Sent me to you. Told me to stay—” She started to fold down towards her dog shape, “—Don’t tell wizard!” Before she could say any more she folded down and back into the form of a dog, howling in annoyance. 

“Oh dear,” Geralt said. “You were the collie at Triss’, weren’t you?” The dog wagged her tail in agreement. Geralt sat down in a chair with a heavy sigh. “Why has Eskel sent you here?” he asked. “If you don’t want me to tell Jaskier…”

The dog growled at the name.

“Alright, I won’t tell him,” Geralt agreed. 

The dog seemed reassured. She made her way, cautiously, over to the hearth, where she gave Yennefer a wary look before curling up. 

“Yen, what do you think?” Geralt asked.

“This dog is a bespelled human.”

“I know that,” Geralt snorted. “Can you take the spell off?”

Yennefer shook her head. “I’d need to be linked with Jaskier to try.”

Geralt supposed he should be surprised. He put his hand on the dog’s head; perhaps his own magic would work. “Turn back into the woman you should be,” he ordered. Nothing happened. He tried several more times, ignoring the increasingly loud sneezes from upstairs. They became louder and more pointed until the castle was shaking with every cough. 

“All right,” Geralt muttered. “It’ll be green slime next.” He stomped up the stairs. “Really, it’s as though he’s never had a cold before.” Geralt opened the door to Jaskier’s room. “What is it?”

“I’m dying of boredom,” Jaskier said piteously. “Or possibly just dying.”

Geralt cautiously approached the bed—the room was a mess and everything was coated in a layer of dust. The spiders that Jaskier was so fond of were working hard in the canopy above the bed. 

Geralt placed a hand on Jaskier’s forehead. “You do have a bit of a fever.”

“I’m delirious,” Jaskier moaned. “Spots are dancing before my eyes.”

“Those are the spiders,” Geralt said. “Can’t you cure yourself with a spell?”

“There isn’t a cure for a cold,” Jaskier said balefully. “I keep thinking about the terms of the curse. I hadn’t realized Marx would be able to lay me bare like that—it doesn’t help that all the things that have happened are all my own fault.” He looked genuinely upset and Geralt felt a pang of sympathy. “I keep waiting for the rest to finish.”

“What things?” Geralt asked, thinking about the odd verse. “The past years bit?”

“No, I know that. They’re all just there, where they always were. I could go back and play bad fairy at my own birth if I wanted.” Jaskier paused for a moment. “Maybe I did and that’s the root of my problems.”

Geralt almost laughed, but managed to avoid it. “So what’s left then?”

“The mermaids, mandrake root, and the wind to advance an honest mind. And if I get white hair, but I don’t plan to take the spell off to check. They all need to happen in the next three weeks, and then Valdo Marx gets me.”

“The rest already happened?” Geralt asked. “The falling star and not being able to find a person true and fair? Although, I suppose I’m not surprised about that bit, the way you go on.”

Jaskier pouted at him.

“Nenneke said you were going bad. Was she right?” 

Jaskier adjusted his position in bed. “I need to go to her funeral if it kills me. Nenneke always thought too highly of me.”

“I was talking about the way you keep dropping people as soon as you’ve made them love you.” Geralt wouldn’t allow Jaskier to distract him. “Why do you do it?”

Jaskier let out a long breath and waved a hand towards the canopy of his bed. “That’s why I love spiders. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.’ I _keep_ trying but it never changes anything.” 

Geralt was alarmed to see that Jaskier was starting to cry. He didn’t know what to do with that at all—Jaskier was normally so self-assured, as if nothing could touch him. Even when he acted upset, it was often more to gain sympathy than for any true emotion.

“It’s my own fault,” Jaskier admitted, voice raspy and quiet. “I brought it on myself by making a bargain years ago. Now I shall never be able to love anyone properly, _truly._ ”

Geralt patted Jaskier’s shoulder in what he hoped was a comforting manner. A pattering sound announced the arrival of the dog-woman. Geralt reached out and grabbed her red fur—she was an irish setter at the moment—worried that she might try to bite Jaskier.

“What’s this?” Jaskier asked. 

“My new dog.” 

Jaskier just stared for a moment before blinking slowly once, twice, and then drifting to sleep. 

Geralt quietly led the dog out of the room and shut the door behind him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Count of Catterack is one of the only characters who I didn't replace with a random Witcher character because the joke was just too good to ignore.


	15. In which Jaskier goes to a funeral in disguise

The dog-woman went out into the yard for a while—she was quite taken with Turnip-Head. She dashed back inside when a red-bearded man burst into the castle carrying a box of supplies. Ciri removed the cloak and dropped the box onto a workbench so that she could give the dog a pat.

“I hope she stays,” Ciri said. “I’ve always wanted a dog.”

Jaskier had heard Ciri’s voice because he came downstairs wrapped with a large patchwork quilt. Geralt tensed, ready to stop the dog-woman if she attacked Jaskier, but she was polite to him as well, even deigning to let the wizard pet her. 

“Did you get everything?” Jaskier rasped.

“I did!” Ciri agreed. “And there’s an empty shop for sale in Rivia. Do you think we could move the castle there?”

Jaskier sat on a tall stool and arranged his quilt around him artfully. “That depends on how much it is. I’m tempted to move the Cintra entrance there. Although, that would be tricky because that’s where Yennefer is.”

“Yennefer is in Cintra?” Geralt asked. He still didn’t entirely understand that castle’s magic.

“Of course,” Jaskier said. “The inside of the castle is my house in Cintra. The rest of it is just, well, window dressing.” 

“I don’t think we should bother with moving me,” Yennefer said, flickering uneasily. 

Geralt was distracted from the rest of the ensuing argument by thinking about the dog. He had tried to make it clear to her that he didn’t know how to break the spell. Despite that, the dog seemed happy to stay. She went for a run with Ciri and spent a while playing a game of chase with Turnip-Head in the yard.

Jaskier was in and out of bed all day. His cold kept him from helping Ciri measure every corner of the castle, but he occasionally descended the stairs wrapped in a quilt to ask questions and make announcements, mostly for Geralt’s benefit.

“Geralt, since you whitewashed over all the marks we made when I invented the castle, perhaps you could tell me where the marks in Ciri’s room were?”

Geralt didn’t look up from his sewing. “I can’t.”

Jaskier sneezed sadly and retreated. He returned a few minutes later to ask, “If we were to buy the shop, what would we sell?” When Geralt did not immediately respond, he added, “Apply your fiendish mind to the matter.”

It was almost an hour before he returned. “Geralt, do you have a preference about the other entrances? Where would you like to live?”

Geralt was highly suspicious of this, but he pictured Triss’ cottage. “Somewhere with lots of flowers.”

“I see,” Jaskier croaked before returning to his room.

When he next appeared, the quilt was gone and Jaskier was dressed. He pulled on the cloak that Ciri had used and transformed into the red-bearded man, still sneezing pitifully.

“You’ll feel worse if you don’t rest,” Geralt warned him.

Jaskier paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I shall die and then you’ll all be sorry.” 

**

“I’ve taken the shop,” Jaskier announced as he returned and shed the disguise cloak. “I’m not sure how I’ll pay for it, though.”

“What about the money for finding Princess Renfri?” Ciri asked.

“The whole object of this operation—” Jaskier waved a hand to indicate the various markings Ciri had put up around the castle— “is to avoid looking for Princess Renfri. We are trying to vanish.” 

Ciri looked like she wanted to protest, but Jaskier started coughing and then sulked his way upstairs. Ciri trailed behind him. 

Geralt might have gone up as well, except the dog-woman got in his way. She didn’t seem to like Geralt doing anything for Jaskier. Geralt felt that was a fairly reasonable opinion and returned to mending the jacket. 

As evening approached, Jaskier returned downstairs, once again wrapped in his quilt. “This is my last appearance,” he announced. “Nenneke’s funeral is tomorrow and I would like this doublet cleaned.” Jaskier extracted the blue-and-scarlet doublet and passed it to Geralt. “You’re attending to the wrong clothes. This is the one I like, but I don’t have the energy to magic it clean.”

“You don’t need to go to the funeral, do you?” Ciri asked.

“I have to go. She made me the wizard I am today. I have to pay my respects.”

“But your cold’s gotten worse!”

“He made it worse,” Geralt said with a snort.

Jaskier put on his noblest expression. “I’ll be fine.”

Ciri tugged on Jaskier’s sleeve. “But what about the Wizard?”

“I’ll go in disguise. Possibly as another corpse.”

“Then you need a winding sheet and not a doublet,” Geralt said, but Jaskier had already trailed back up the stairs without saying anything else.

Geralt waited until he heard the door to the bedroom shut and then grabbed his scissors, cutting the charmed blue-and-scarlet doublet into seven jagged pieces. Once that was done, he finished repairing the pink jacket—it was considerably shorter with the slime-stained parts removed, but Geralt hoped Jaskier would be satisfied with it until he had a chance to buy something new. 

Geralt took the repaired jacket upstairs and tiptoed into Jaskier’s room. He placed the jacket on a chest by the bed, and as he did so, his attention was caught by the window. Outside this window he could see a woman throwing a ball towards Jaskier’s nephew, Peter. 

“Snooping again?” Jaskier’s voice was raspy and weak but he was sitting up in bed now, watching Geralt with an unreadable expression. “‘ _Teach me to keep off envy’s sting_ ’—” Jaskier recited— “that’s part of past years now. I loved Wales, but it doesn’t love me.” He smiled ruefully. “Ferrant’s envious of me because he’s respectable and I’m not.”

“How are you feeling?” Geralt asked, turning his attention away from the window. Jaskier was still pale and the dark circles under his eyes had gotten worse.

“I’ve been better.” 

“Get some more rest.”

Jaskier nodded agreeably and settled back down. Geralt waited for a moment before pulling the quilt up, tucking Jaskier in, and then quietly going back downstairs.

**

“Geralt,” Jaskier said accusingly. He was standing at the foot of the stairs wearing the pink jacket which fell just to his waist now—lacking the flair he preferred. “Geralt, dear, where is my doublet?”

Geralt went to the closet and pulled out the pieces of the doublet. 

“Well.” Jaskier blinked at the pieces of fabric. “That’s something. Give it here.”

Geralt reluctantly handed over the pieces of fabric.

“Now—” Jaskier said, looking from Geralt to Ciri to Yen and back to Geralt— “I am going to get ready for the funeral. Please, all of you, refrain from doing anything at all while I do. I can tell Geralt is in top form at the moment and I want to be able to recognize this room when I return.” 

Geralt and Ciri watched as Jaskier disappeared into the bathroom. Geralt fed the dog-woman and Ciri gave Yennefer another log, but they were reluctant to do much else. 

Jaskier came out of the bathroom two hours later in a steam of honey-scented spells. He was in a black outfit with black boots and a single onyx pendant in one ear. Jaskier conjured himself a black tissue and blew his nose with it.

Geralt wondered which outfit the black one really was—it didn’t resemble either the doublet or jacket. 

Jaskier picked up a slice of bread and offered it to the dog-woman who gave it a dubious look. “Come here, pup,” Jaskier coaxed. “I just want to have a look at you.” The dog moved cautiously into the middle of the room and Jaskier watched her carefully. “You won’t find my clothes in the bathroom, you great snoop. You’re not getting your hands on any of my clothes again,” he said to Geralt, who stopped tiptoeing towards the bathroom and stood with his arms crossed. Jaskier continued to look at the dog. 

“What do you think of this as a disguise?” Jaskier asked. He started to fall forward, transforming as he did. By the time he touched the floor he was a red setter, just like the dog-woman. 

The dog-woman, alarmed by this development, raised her hackles and snarled at Jaskier. Jaskier growled right back at her. Geralt grabbed for one of them before they could fight and Ciri pulled the other one back. Jaskier hastily returned to human form and Geralt let go of the back of his jacket. 

“Good,” Jaskier said. “If I can fool another dog, I should be able to fool anyone.”

“Why bother dressing in all black if you are going to the funeral as a dog?” Geralt asked.

Jaskier lifted his chin and tried to look noble—it was harder than usual with his drippy nose. “Respect for Nenneke. She liked one to pay attention to the details.”

With that, Jaskier stepped out into Creyden and closed the door behind him. 


	16. In which there is a great deal of wizardry

“Brace yourself, Yennefer! He’s found me!” Jaskier’s voice rang out from nowhere. Yennefer immediately roared up larger than Geralt had ever seen her. Her face blurred into a dozen copies and she continued to roar furiously. 

“They must be fighting,” Ciri whispered, voice tense. 

Geralt watched as Yennefer pulsed from a bright blue to deep purple and then to almost white. One moment she had multiple orange eyes and the next she had rows of starry silver ones. Somewhere above them something exploded and the entire castle shook. 

Ciri and Geralt both scrambled to the window to see what was happening. The storm of magic affected half of the things in the room—the skull was chattering its teeth, several jars and packets of ingredients exploded, and the lute made several out-of-tune twangs. 

People in the houses opposite were pointing at something just overhead of the castle. Ciri darted over the cupboard and pulled out the two velvet cloaks. She passed one to Geralt—the one that turned the wearer into a red-bearded man—and threw the other over her shoulders. Geralt realized why Yennefer had laughed when Geralt put it on before. Ciri was a horse.

Geralt pushed the door open and stumbled into the street as the house shook again. The dog-woman followed, and after a moment Ciri did as well, with a clatter of non-existent hooves. Luckily, although the street was crowded, they were all too distracted to notice things like horses coming out of houses. 

A huge cloud was twisting around on itself just above the chimney of the castle. White flashes stabbed out of the murk but did nothing to illuminate what was happening within the cloud. For a moment the smoke hung in the air, twisting in on itself, and then it split in half and shot out towards the sea. 

Geralt and Ciri followed the crowd rushing up to the harbour wall and turned to watch the two clouds, still separate, hanging just above the water. A single ship was caught in between the two magical storm clouds as the water turned frenzied around them. 

“Can’t they have a care for that ship!” someone in the crowd shouted. 

The wind and waves from the storm hit the harbour wall; moored ships crashed against their moorings. High, almost song-like screaming came from below and Geralt leaned over the wall to see a number of wet ladies with green hair dragging themselves up onto the harbour wall and then reaching back to help more still in the tossing waves. They each had a fish tail instead of legs.

“The mermaids from the curse,” Geralt realized with rising dread. “Fuck.” Only two impossible things left. 

When Geralt looked back up he could see Jaskier perched on top of the closer cloud, staring down at the frenzied mermaids. His expression did not suggest that he remembered they were part of the curse.

“Focus on the wizard!” Ciri shouted. A few people looked askance at the horse but their attention was quickly drawn back to the fight. 

As if summoned, the Wizard of the Waste appeared on the opposite cloud. As Jaskier turned his attention back, Valdo Marx raised his arm and Jaskier’s cloud erupted into a fountain of pink flame. The heat from the blast swept across the harbour and the wall steamed. Geralt held his breath—terrified for Jaskier.

“He’s all right,” Ciri gasped, spotting Jaskier standing on the deck of the ship. 

Jaskier looked up and waved cheekily at Marx. Marx spotted him and transformed into a huge red bird, swooping down on the boat. The ship vanished, but the bird was moving too fast and crashed into the sea with a huge splash. 

For a moment the only sound was the still-raging sea and the doleful cry of the mermaids. Then, several people on the quayside cheered. “I knew it wasn’t a real ship!” someone called.

“Yes, it must have been an illusion,” the horse said. “It was too small.”

The wave from the splash reached the harbour wall just as Ciri stopped speaking—twenty feet of water crashing into the harbour. The mermaids were pulled back out to sea, still screaming. An arm came out from the side of the horse and hauled Geralt back toward higher ground. They crested a hill just as a second wave hit. Out of the wave burst a huge creature—a long, black creature that looked to be half cat, half seal. A second monster, this one much scalier, followed a moment later, chasing the first back up into the city. 

A large portion of the crowd stayed to help with the boats. Geralt and Ciri joined the group chasing the monsters through the streets of Cintra. They followed a trail of seawater and then huge wet paw prints to the edge of the city and out into the marshes beyond. The monsters were just dark spots in the distance. The crowd spread out, hoping for more, but all they could see was the empty marsh. 

“Look!” a woman shouted, pointing out to a ball of pale fire rising in the distance. By the time they heard the bang from the explosion the fireball had become nothing but a plume of smoke. The smoke spread outwards, blending in with the mist rising up from the marsh.

Nothing else happened for a long time. After a time the birds began to cry again. 

“I reckon they must have done each other in,” a man said as the crowd started to disperse. 

Geralt and Ciri waited until the last of the crowd departed and then for several minutes longer. Once it was absolutely clear that it was all over, they turned and silently made their way back to the castle. Only the dog-woman seemed happy, trotting along contentedly until they reached their road. A stray cat was crossing the road close to Jaskier’s house and the dog bounded after it. The cat raced for the door to the castle with the dog close behind. 

“Get off!” the cat mewed. 

The dog backed away, tail drooping. 

Ciri galloped to the door. “Jaskier!” 

The cat shrank to the size of a kitten and looked very sorry for itself. “You both look ridiculous!” the kitten said. “Open the door.”

Geralt opened the door and the damp kitten crawled inside and over to the hearth where Yennefer was flickering weakly. Once he was close to the fire the kitten slowly grew into Jaskier.

“Did you kill the wizard?” Ciri asked, taking off the cloak.

“No,” Jaskier sighed. He dropped into the chair, scooting it as close to the hearth as he could. “Geralt, please take off that horrible red beard and find the bottle of brandy in the closet, unless you’ve turned it into turpentine, of course.”

Geralt took off the cloak and hung it in the closet before pulling out the brandy and a glass. Jaskier drank one glass as if it were water, and then dripped a second glass over Yennefer. Yennefer sizzled and seemed to revive slightly. “I don’t know who won,” he admitted. “Valdo is hard to get to—he relies on his fire demon and stays behind out of reach. But I think we gave him something to think about.”

“It’s old,” Yennefer said, voice still weak. “I’m stronger, but it knows things I don’t. Marx has had his demon for a hundred years. It half killed me!” Yennefer climbed further up the logs to glare at Jaskier. “You could have warned me.”

“I did!” Jaskier sounded exasperated. “You know everything I do.”

Ciri went and found bread and sausage for them to eat and after a time Yennefer began burning at her usual level.

“Valdo knows we’re in Cintra.” Jaskier hauled himself to his feet. “It won’t be enough to just move the castle and the Creyden entrance—we’ll need to transfer Yennefer to the house that goes with the shop in Rivia.”

“Move me?” Yennefer crackled.

“Yes. It’s a choice between Rivia or the Wizard.”

“Curses!” Yennefer wailed, diving to the bottom of the grate. 


	17. In which the moving castle moves house

The next morning Jaskier was back to full energy, bouncing around the castle and marking chalk symbols on the walls and calling measurements to Ciri. The final step seemed to be a five-pointed star inside a circle chalked onto the floor. Jaskier added signs and symbols all around the star and symbol.

Jaskier and Ciri both raced out into the yard. Jaskier raced back inside a moment later. “Geralt, what are we going to sell in the shop?”

Geralt considered for a moment. “Flowers?”

“Perfect!” Jaskier declared before hurrying back outside. 

Geralt and the dog-woman stayed on the stairs, watching the bustle of activity. Jaskier walked to the door, carrying a can paint and a small brush. He dipped the brush into the can and painted the blue blob yellow. Dipping the brush a second time produced purple paint, which he used over the green mark. A third dip and orange covered the red blob. 

Once that was done he placed the paint can on the bench and surveyed the room. “Ciri, where’s the silver shovel?”

Ciri raced inside with a large spade, the blade made of shining silver. “All set outside!”

Jaskier took the shovel and sprinkled red powder onto it. He added some of the powder to each point of the star and tipped the rest into the middle. “Everyone stand back.” Jaskier instructed. “Yennefer, are you ready?”

Yennefer rose cautiously between the logs. “As ready as I’ll ever be. You know this could kill me, right?”

Jaskier shrugged. “Look on the bright side. It could kill me instead.” He dug the shovel into the grate, gently shifting it to move it under Yennefer. “Hold on tight.” Logs toppled away from Yennefer as she reached out tendrils to grip the edges of the shovel. Jaskier stood up, carefully holding the shovel steady as he stepped away from the grate, carrying Yennefer on the shovel. 

The room filled with smoke. Yennefer was flickering nervously, and at the base of her flame was a faintly glowing black lump. The lump was rounded and rocked slightly as Jaskier moved. 

“Just a moment longer,” Jaskier soothed, but then had to stop, struggling not to cough. After a moment he recovered and carefully stepped into the chalk circle, and from there into the center of the five-pointed star.

Jaskier and Yennefer spun in a circle and it felt as if the room turned with them. Ciri stumbled and Geralt was glad he was sitting down, as everything around them seemed to swing and sway as if they had come unstuck from space. Taking the same carefully measured steps, Jaskier left the star and circle and moved to kneel by the hearth. He carefully slid Yennefer back into the grate and piled logs in around her. 

The room rocked and settled. As the smoke cleared, Geralt saw the well-known outlines of the parlour of the house he had grown up in. The kitchen of the castle seemed to wiggle itself to fit the outlines of the parlour until the two melted together. 

“Have you done it, Yen?” 

“I think so,” Yennefer said, rising up towards the chimney. “You’d better double check.”

Jaskier used the shovel to haul himself to his feet and opened the door with the yellow blob down. Outside was the street in Rivia that Geralt had known his whole life. Jaskier nodded and closed the door. He turned the knob orange-down and opened it onto a wide weedy drive with picturesque trees and a fancy stone gateway at the end. 

“Where is this?” Jaskier asked, leaning out the door.

“An empty mansion near Oxenfurt,” Yennefer said defensively. “It’s the nice house you told me to find.” 

Jaskier shut the door with a shrug. “Hopefully the real owners won’t mind.” He turned the knob purple-down and opened the door for the moving castle. 

Outside, it was nearly dusk. A warm wind carried a myriad of scents into the castle. They moved past a bush with large purple flowers. As the castle moved past a bush with large purple flowers, they saw a patch of white lilies and a glimpse of sunset reflected on a still lake. The smell was so wonderful that Geralt was halfway across the room before he was aware of moving. 

“No,” Jaskier told him, shutting the door. “Wait until tomorrow. That part is right on the edge of the Waste; you’ll need to be careful not to wander too far.” He turned to smile brightly at Yennefer. “Excellent job, Yen. A nice house and lots of flowers as ordered.” With a yawn he placed the shovel by the grate and went to bed. 

Geralt wondered why the moving castle was now on the edge of the Waste—was the curse pulling Jaskier towards the Wizard of the Waste? Or had Jaskier slithered out so hard that he had come back around on himself? He looked up to ask Ciri what she thought but the girl had fallen asleep next to the dog-woman on the floor. 

Yennefer was flickering more brightly again, back to her usual rosy color. Geralt considered her, the way she had pulsed almost white, the almost familiar shape. “Yennefer, were you a falling star?”

“Of course.” Yennefer opened one purple eye to look at Geralt. “I can talk about that if you know.”

“And Jaskier caught you?” 

“Five years ago,” Yennefer agreed. “He chased me through the Cintran marshes. I was terrified of him. Terrified in general, because when you fall, you know you’re going to die. I didn’t want to die. When Jaskier offered to keep me alive the way humans stay alive, I suggested a contract on the spot.” She paused, flickering thoughtfully for a moment. “Neither of us really knew what we were getting into. I was grateful and Jaskier just wanted to help.”

Ciri woke, blinking up at Geralt. “I wish we weren’t right on the edge of the Waste.” She admitted. “I don’t feel safe.”

“Nobody is safe in a wizard’s house,” Yennefer said. 

**

When Geralt woke, the door was set to black down and wouldn’t open or change settings. He growled, not appreciating the fact that he was trapped inside. He fetched a mop and took out his irritation by working to scrub out the chalk signs on the floors and walls.

“Work, work, work,” Jaskier said, tone light and teasing as he stepped into the castle. His suit was still black but he had turned his hair fair and it looked almost white against the dark clothing. Jaskier picked up the skull, holding it in one hand. “Alas, poor Yorick!” Jaskier said dramatically. “He heard mermaids, so there must be something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught a never-ending cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest.” He coughed, but his cold was getting better so it did not sound convincing. 

Geralt looked at the dog-woman. “You should go back to Eskel.” He looked back to Jaskier. “Things not going well with Miss Vigo?”

“Dreadfully,” Jaskier said. “Fringilla Vigo has a heart made of stone.” He put the skull back down. “We should have breakfast.”

**

After they had eaten, Jaskier and Ciri knocked a hole in the sidewall of the broom cupboard and disappeared into it. There was a great deal of banging, and then they called for Geralt. He approached, carrying a broom in preparation. There was an archway where the wall had been, leading to the steps that connected the shop and the house. Jaskier waved Geralt into the shop, which was empty and echoed oddly. The shelves which had once held notebooks and pouches held a vase of silk roses. It looked lovely, and Geralt knew he was supposed to admire it but he didn’t want to inflate Jaskier’s already dangerously large ego, so he managed not to say anything. 

“Come and look outside,” Jaskier said. He opened the door to the street and Geralt hobbled after him. The shop front had been painted in green and gold. Delicate golden script on the window read _BELLEGARDE BLOSSOMS—FRESH FLOWERS DAILY._

Geralt looked at Jaskier questioningly. 

“For disguise reasons,” Jaskier said, looking pleased with himself. “And I like the alliteration.”

“Where do the fresh flowers come from?” Geralt asked. 

“Wait and see.” Jaskier led the way back into the shop and then across the courtyard of Geralt’s childhood home, although it was only half the size now that the yard from the castle took up half of the space. As Geralt followed Jaskier inside he realized that he was being unnecessarily rude, though seeing his former home mixed in with the castle was unsettling. “I think it’s all very nice.” 

“Really?” Jaskier said coldly. 

Geralt sighed. He hadn’t meant to hurt Jaskier’s feelings but he hadn’t ever praised the wizard and he wasn’t sure why he should start now. Jaskier went to the castle door and turned the knob purple-down before swinging the door open. 

Outside, on the edge of the waste, were huge bushes loaded with flowers. The castle drifted to a stop so that Geralt could climb down among them. Rows of grass separated the rows of flowering bushes and seemed to stretch in all directions. The castle, as odd as it looked, did not seem out of place amongst the flowers. Geralt could feel the magic in the air around them. The air was warm and scented with thousands of flowers. It was truly marvelous. More flowers than Geralt had ever seen, some he recognized, and so many more that he hadn’t seen before. Asters, camellias, violets and heliotropes blossomed around them. It was wild and strange and so much better than Geralt could have imagined. 

Jaskier waved an arm and his trailing sleeve disturbed a cloud of jewel-bright butterflies. “We can cut flowers by the armload in the morning and sell them with the dew still fresh in Rivia.”

They walked further and came upon a steaming pool surrounded by water lilies. The castle turned away to avoid the pool, drifting down another flower lined avenue. 

“If you come out here alone, bring your stick to test the ground. It’s full of springs and pools like this one.” He pointed to the southeast. “The Waste is there, hot and barren and full of wizard.”

“Who made this?” Geralt asked. “These flowers right on the edge of the Waste?”

“Wizard Priscilla started it a year ago,” Jaskier said, turning towards the castle. “I think she was hoping to make the Waste flower and destroy Valdo that way. She brought hot springs to the surface to start it growing. It was going well until she was caught. I came here a few months after she went missing to keep it going. That’s how I met Valdo. He wasn’t a fan.”

“Why?” Geralt asked.

“He likes to think of himself as unique, a solitary sunflower blooming in the Waste,” Jaskier said as he approached the castle, which had stopped to wait for them.

“Won’t the Wizard know you’re here?” Geralt asked as he followed Jaskier inside.

“I tried to do what he’d least expect.”

“And are you trying to find Princess Renfri?” 

Jaskier slithered out of answering by racing through the broom cupboard, calling for Ciri. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Victorian flower language so much so all the flowers mentioned are for a reason!  
> The flowers that Geralt mentions seeing are:  
> Aster - symbol of love  
> Camillia - longing for you, you're a flame in my heart  
> violet - loyalty, devotion  
> heliotrope - eternal love
> 
> And Valdo Marx is referred to as a sunflower which represents haughtiness


	18. In which Miss Vigo reappears

They opened the flower shop the next day. Geralt took his walking stick and scissors and went out into the warm hazy morning to gather flowers. Ciri had spelled a large tin tub filled with water to float along behind her. The dog-woman romped along with them, chasing butterflies and bright little birds that darted among the flowers. Before the day became too hot they returned to the castle to arrange the flowers into a motley collection of jugs and buckets that had been dug out of the yard. 

Jaskier was missing when they gathered flowers. He was usually just in time for breakfast, coming in from Wales still wearing the black suit. He refused to tell Geralt what outfit it had been transformed from. 

_BELLEGARDE’s_ quickly became popular—news traveled quickly that they had flowers like no one had ever seen before. It was odd to see people Geralt had grown up with unable to recognize him; it made him feel very old in a way he was usually too busy to notice. When Jaskier arrived in the shop in the late morning it was usually busy and his presence only made it even busier. Geralt was convinced that the black suit must have been the charmed blue-and-scarlet doublet, as every customer that Jaskier served ended up buying twice as many flowers as they had meant to. 

Jaskier assured Ciri and Geralt that he had set up defenses against Valdo Marx, and that there would be no way for him to get into the shop or castle. As midsummer grew closer, though, Geralt could see the nervous tension that Jaskier tried to hide. 

Geralt didn’t know what to do about the wizard, and he didn’t want to spend his time worrying about Jaskier, so he threw his attention into the plants. He started selecting those that had medicinal properties to dry and set aside. He also discovered that he could keep any flowers left at the end of the day fresh by speaking to them. Curious about his powers, Geralt started experimenting. He asked Ciri to make a plant-nutrition spell and then planted flowers in soot from the yard, speaking to the seedlings as they grew. He managed to produce little black rosebuds that bloomed a lovely shade of blue. It was possibly the same shade of blue as Jaskier’s eyes but Geralt was sure he hadn’t done that on purpose. Delighted with his rosebush, he took roots from Jaskier’s supply of magical plants and planted several of those as well. He was happy with his work, pleased with what he was doing and with the freedom to experiment. 

“When are you going to break my contract?” Yennefer asked, a week after the shop had opened. 

“I’m working on it,” Geralt lied. He had put a great deal of thought into everything he had learned and he was afraid that breaking the contract would be the end of both Jaskier and Yennefer—and that was not an outcome he was comfortable with. He didn’t want to disappoint Yen, who had been complaining of loneliness with them spending so much time in the shop and with nothing to do other than keep the castle drifting through lanes of flowers that she could not see, but he didn’t want to do anything until he was sure it would actually help. 

Jaskier seemed to be working hard to slither out of the curse, so it seemed like they might have more time to work things out. Or at least, Geralt had been hoping for that, until he saw the odd plants growing from the roots he had planted. 

“What were you trying to grow?” Jaskier asked, frowning at the plant. “Whatever it was, you got it wrong, Mr. Mad Scientist.”

“It looks like a squashed baby,” Ciri said. It had four petals sprouting from an oval middle in a way that did vaguely resemble fat little arms and legs.

Jaskier looked alarmed and picked up the flower, sliding it out of the pot to uncover the root that Geralt had grown the plant from. 

“Oh,” Jaskier sighed looking at the root in his hands. “It’s a mandrake root. Geralt strikes again. You have a knack for this, don’t you?” He carefully returned the plant to its pot and wandered away. 

Geralt and Ciri also left the mandrake. Ciri went into the castle and Geralt went to bustle around in the shop, hoping to find something to keep him busy so he wouldn’t have to focus on the uncomfortable feelings of guilt and worry for Jaskier. 

**

Jaskier was out when Geralt returned to the castle. 

“He seemed upset,” Ciri said. 

Geralt looked to the door with its black-down knob and snorted. How upset could Jaskier have been if he still had time to go and court Miss Vigo?

Ciri went out to take a turn working at the shop and Geralt stomped around inside, feeling frustrated with the entire world—he was sick of the curse and of constantly feeling like he was wandering into situations he had no way to prepare for. He didn’t like to think about Jaskier out flirting when the curse was bound to catch up with him at any time _and_ he didn’t like that he was actually worrying about the foolish wizard. 

The dog-woman trotted over and stretched her paws out in an odd way. 

Geralt realized that she was trying to turn into a human. “You can be human if you want. Put your back into it.” 

The dog stretched again and managed to heave to her hind legs, balancing precariously for a moment before assuming human shape. 

“Wish I could do that as…easily as Jaskier,” she panted. “I was dog...in the hedge you helped. Told Eskel...I knew you. I’d keep watch. I was. Here before...with the wizard.” She doubled over with a snarl of frustration. “Wizard in the shop!” She wailed and the sound turned into a howl as she doubled over, falling onto hands that turned back to paws. The old English sheepdog looked up at Geralt mournfully.

“You were the woman with the Wizard!” Geralt remembered the anxious woman who had seemed so horrified. “Then you know who I am and that I’m under a spell. Does Eskel know?”

The dog nodded.

“And the Wizard called you Anatidae,” Geralt said. “He has made this hard for you, hasn’t he? Imagine having so much fur in his heat.” 

The dog nodded again before ambling out into the yard to find a patch of shade. 

“It doesn’t make any difference how many people know you’re under a spell,” Yennefer said. “It hasn’t helped the dog, has it?”

“No,” Geralt agreed with a sigh. 

The door clicked open—the knob was still black down so Geralt expected Jaskier. Instead, Miss Vigo stepped into the room 

“Oh, I’m sorry to intrude,” she said. “I thought Mr. Lettenhove might be here.”

“He’s out,” Geralt said, wondering where Jaskier had gone if not to see Miss Vigo. 

Miss Vigo stepped further into the room. “Please don’t tell Mr. Lettenhove I was here. I’ve only been encouraging him in hope of getting news of my fiancee—Priscilla Caprice, you know. I’m sure Prissy disappeared to the same place Mr. Lettenhove disappears to. Only she hasn’t come back.” 

“Hm.” Geralt watched her warily. He wondered if she meant Wizard Priscilla. “She’s not here.”

“Oh I know,” Miss Vigo agreed. “But this feels like the right place. Do you mind if I look around a bit?” She tried to walk further into the room but Geralt stood in the way. Miss Vigo was forced to move sideways and away from Yennefer. “How quaint.” She tried to move further into the room. 

Geralt continued to glare and tried to keep her from going any farther into the castle. Miss Vigo looked over at Yennefer and frowned, as if she was not sure what she was seeing. Yennefer stared back without saying a word. It made Geralt feel better about being rude; if Yennefer didn’t like Miss Vigo, then she shouldn’t be allowed to linger in the castle. 

“Where did you get that?” Miss Vigo asked suddenly, moving quickly over to the lute. She picked it up and turned back to Geralt. “Priscilla had a lute like this! It could be hers!” 

“Jaskier bought it last winter.” Geralt said, walking forward again to try to herd Miss Vigo out of the door. 

“Something happened to Prissy!” Miss Vigo said dramatically. “She would never be parted from her lute! Where is she? I know she isn’t dead! I’d _know_ in my heart if she were!”

Geralt frowned, wondering if he ought to tell her that the Wizard of the Waste had caught Wizard Priscilla. 

“May I take this lute?” Miss Vigo asked. “To remind me of Prissy?”

The dramatic tremble in Miss Vigo’s voice annoyed Geralt. “No. There’s no need to be so intense about it.” He hobbled closer to Miss Vigo. “You’ve no proof it was hers.”

Miss Vigo continued to clutch the lute. Geralt managed to wrench it out of her hands. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve no right to walk into people’s castles and take their lutes.” He held the lute out of her reach, suddenly feeling rather protective of it. “I’ve told you Miss Caprice isn’t here. Now go back to Wales. Go on.” He managed to back Miss Vigo up to the door.

“You’re being exceedingly difficult,” Miss Vigo said reproachfully as she stepped back into nothingness. 

“Yes, I am!” Geralt said and slammed the door shut. He turned the knob orange-down to prevent Miss Vigo from returning. “Don’t tell Jaskier she was here!” Geralt told Yennefer. “I’m sure she came to see Jaskier. The rest was ridiculous. Wizard Priscilla was settled here years ago.”

Yennefer seemed impressed. “I’ve never seen anyone gotten rid of so quickly.”

Geralt grimaced—that made him feel unkind and guilty, especially considering he had come to the castle in much the same way. He stomped into the bathroom and growled at his old face in the mirror. He didn’t think, even before the curse, that he compared particularly well to Miss Vigo. Not that it should matter! He was still in a foul mood as he stomped back into the kitchen. He knew he was acting ridiculous, but the knowledge didn’t help, nor did it make any easier to calm himself down. 


	19. In which Geralt expresses his feelings with weed-killer

Jaskier wandered back into the castle as the sun started to set, whistling cheerfully, clearly over the mandrake root. Geralt glowered at him.

“Dear gods,” Jaskier gasped. “I think that gaze turned me to stone. What’s wrong?”

“What suit is that really?” Geralt snapped.

Jaskier looked down at his black clothes in confusion. “Does it matter?”

“Yes!” Geralt growled.

Jaskier, still looking puzzled, held up one of the trailing sleeves. The black color ran down from his shoulder to the tips of the sleeve, turning the cuff an inky black and revealing a pale rose sleeve. “This one.” 

The fact that it was not the charmed doublet somehow made the entire thing worse. He just growled in frustration. 

“Geralt!” Jaskier’s tone was somewhere between laughter and pleading. 

The dog-woman pushed the door open and ambled into the room—she didn’t seem to like leaving Geralt and Jaskier alone together. 

“You’ve got another dog?” Jaskier asked. “Two dogs are going to require a lot of feeding.”

“There’s only one dog,” Geralt snapped. “She’s under a spell.”

“She is?” Jaskier asked. He darted towards the dog who backed away looking nervous. Jaskier pounced, grabbing onto the dog’s shaggy fur. “Geralt! Why didn’t you tell me about this? This dog is a woman!” Jaskier turned to look at Geralt, maintaining his grip on the dog. “She’s in a terrible state.” Jaskier sounded angry now. 

Good. Geralt was in the mood for a fight. “You could have noticed yourself if you spent any time at home.” 

“I did have other things to worry about!” Jaskier snapped. He stood, starting to pull the dog towards the fireplace. “Come on, I need you closer to Yennefer.” The dog tried to get away but Jaskier was determined and continued pushing her. “Ciri!”

Ciri came running, recognizing the intensity in Jaskier’s tone. 

“Did _you_ know the dog was really a woman?” Jaskier asked as Ciri came over to help him move the dog. 

“She is?” Ciri asked.

“Of course, this is entirely Geralt’s fault,” Jaskier snarled. “But you knew, didn’t you Yennefer?”

“You never asked,” Yen said. 

“Do I have to ask? Fine, I should have noticed myself, but still!” Jaskier’s anger was fading, but it was not entirely gone. His tone still bitter. “I cannot believe you, Yen! Compared to the way Marx treats his demon you live a revoltingly easy life. All I ask in return is that you tell me things I need to know. This is twice that you’ve kept things from me.” 

Yennefer looked as remorseful as a fire could, turning a pale green color and shrinking low on the logs. 

“Help me get this creature back to her own shape,” Jaskier demanded. 

“Okay.” 

The dog-woman was still trying to get away. “This feels like Valdo’s work, doesn’t it?” Jaskier asked as he tried to hold the dog steady.

“It is. There are several layers to it,” Yennefer agreed. 

“Well let's get rid of the dog part at least.”

Yennefer roared up, a wall of heat issuing from her as she turned a vibrant blue. The shaggy dog shape faded away slowly, hardening into the shape of a woman. She hung limply, one arm held by Jaskier and the other by Ciri.

“Who are you?” Jaskier asked. 

The woman managed to find her footing. “I’m… not sure.”

“The most recent name she answered to was Callonetta,” Yennefer supplied. 

“Did I?” The woman frowned at Yennefer as if she wished that Yennefer had not known that. 

“Then you can be Callonetta,” Jaskier said. “Sit down and tell us what you remember. It seems like the Wizard of the Waste had you for a while.”

“Yes,” Callonetta said. “He took my head off. I. I remember being on a shelf, I think. Looking at the rest of me.”

“But you’d be dead!” Ciri protested. 

“Not necessarily.” Jaskier grimaced. “You haven’t gotten to that type of magic yet, but I could take any piece of you I wanted and leave the rest of you alive. It’s not a good sort of magic.” He frowned at Callonetta. “I don’t think you were put back together properly.”

“This woman is incomplete,” Yennefer agreed, clearly trying to make it up to Jaskier. “And she has parts of someone else as well.”

Callonetta covered her face with her hands and crumpled in the chair. 

“Don’t alarm her, Yen,” Jaskier said. “She must feel bad enough already.” He knelt down next to Callonetta and his tone tuned soft and soothing. “Do you know why the Wizard took your head?”

“No,” Callonetta whimpered. “I don’t remember anything.” 

Ciri leaned in closer. “Did you ever answer to the name of Renfri?”

“No.” Callonetta shook her head. “The Wizard called me Anatidae but that’s not my name.”

Geralt turned away from the scene by the fire and went to look at a bucket of daffodils he had been working on earlier. Something had gone terribly wrong—the flowers were dead and the liquid in the bucket smelled foul and poisonous. 

“Fuck!” Geralt growled. 

“What’s that?” Jaskier appeared at his shoulder, peering in the bucket. “You seem to have made a rather potent weed-killer. You could try it on the weeds on the path to the mansion.”

“Hm,” Geralt said. “I do feel like killing something.” 

Jaskier stayed out of his way as Geralt stomped about grabbing a watering can and the bucket. Callonetta looked up nervously as Geralt stormed past. 

“Callonetta, go with him,” Jaskier instructed. “The mood he’s in, he’ll be killing all the trees as well.”

Callonetta nodded and followed Geralt out into a golden summer evening. The mansion was much grander than Geralt had expected, although it was in a state of disrepair. The walls were covered in mildew and many of the windows were broken. 

“Jaskier could have at least made the place look more lived-in.” Geralt snorted. “But he was too busy gallivanting off to Wales.”

Geralt took a deep breath of the fresh air, feeling some of his tension drain away. He took up the accidental weed-killer which turned out to be incredibly effective. Geralt set to work, taking the remainder of his anger out on the weeds. 

“You remember more than you’re saying,” Geralt said to Callonetta as he worked. “What did Marx really want with you? Why did he bring you to the shop?”

Callonetta shuffled her feet. “He wanted to find out about Jaskier.”

“But you didn’t know him, did you?” 

“No,” Callonetta huffed. “But I must have known something. I think it had to do with the curse. Whatever I knew about it, Valdo Marx took the knowledge from me. I was trying to keep the information from him, because a curse is an evil thing. I was trying to keep my mind on something else and I thought about Eskel, although I don’t know how I _knew_ Eskel because he said he didn’t know me when I went to Temeria.” 

“That’s why he came to the shop?” 

“Yes, I’m sorry.” 

Geralt poured more of the weed-killer, wishing the weeds were the Wizard. “And then he turned you into a dog?”

Callonetta nodded. “He sent me away and said that he’d call when he needed me. I tried to get away—I could feel the spell coming after me, but I couldn’t escape it. Some people saw me turning into a dog and thought I was a werewolf and tried to kill me. After you got me out of that hedge where I was stuck I went to find Eskel. He was very kind, even though he didn’t know me. Then Wizard Jaskier started coming ‘round. Eskel didn’t want Jaskier courting him and asked me to bite Jaskier to get rid of him.” Callonetta flashed a slightly feral grin. “I would have too, but then Jaskier started asking about _you_ and—”

“What?” Geralt spun to face her, just barely avoiding spilling weed-killer on his shoes.

“Jaskier said, ‘I know someone called Geralt who looks like you,’ and Eskel said that you were his brother. Eskel was really worried about it, especially when Jaskier kept on asking about you,” she continued. “The day you came to the house, Eskel was being nice to Jaskier to find out how he knew you. Jaskier said that you were an old man and Eskel got terribly upset. He was so worried about you.”

“Hm.” Geralt was puzzling over this information. 

“Eskel said that you would think you were safe from Jaskier, that you wouldn’t see how heartless he was. He was so upset that I managed to turn into a human long enough to offer to come and keep an eye on you.”

“I don’t need a watchdog,” Geralt grumbled, still trying to process the rest of the information. All the time that Geralt had thought Jaskier was courting Eskel he had been asking about _Geralt_? 

“You do,” Callonetta said. “Or maybe you did. I think I arrived too late.”

“Too late?” Geralt swung around, leaving a long brown swathe through the grass. “What nonsense! Jaskier’s _impossible!_ ” Geralt dropped the empty watering can and stormed away from Callonetta. He was tempted to leave the mansion and give up on all of this, nevermind that Nenneke had been counting on Geralt to help Jaskier. Nenneke had thought that Geralt was Jaskier’s loving parent anyway. Or, Geralt realized with a sinking feeling, perhaps she hadn’t. If she could pick out the charm sewn into Jaskier’s doublet she certainly would have been able to detect the curse on Geralt. 

“That damn blue-and-scarlet doublet!” Geralt growled. He couldn’t believe that he had been the one caught by the spell. Although the pink jacket seemed to have worked just the same. “It doesn’t matter,” Geralt decided with some relief. “Jaskier doesn’t even like me.”

When Geralt turned back to the mansion it was spotless, long curtains fluttered in the open French windows. The shutters had been painted and there was not a single green stain left. Geralt slammed open the door and watched in satisfaction as Jaskier and Ciri both scrambled away from the spells they had been using—one must have been to change the mansion but the other had clearly been some kind of eavesdropping spell. 

“Keep behind me, Ciri,” Jaskier hissed.

“You accuse me of being a snoop?” Geralt growled.

“What’s wrong?” Jaskier asked. 

“You! That wasn’t the only thing you heard! How long have you know I was—” 

“Under a spell?” Jaskier offered.

“Yes!”

“Eskel mentioned it. So did Triss,” Jaskier said. “Yennefer mentioned as well. But, honestly, do you think I’m such a terrible wizard that I wouldn’t notice such an obvious spell when I see it? I even tried to take it off a few times, but nothing seemed to work. I had hoped that Nenneke might be able to remove it but even that didn’t work.” Jaskier shrugged. “I figured you just liked to be in disguise.”

“Disguise?!” Geralt shouted. 

“It must be,” Jaskier scoffed. “Since you are doing it to yourself.”

Geralt snatched the half-full bucket of weed-killer from Callonetta and threw it at Jaskier. Jaskier ducked. Ciri dodged out of the way of the bucket. The weed-killer went up in a sheet of green flame. 

“Ow,” Yennefer said. “That was strong.”

Jaskier picked up the skull from under the smoking remains of a pot of flowers. “Of course. Geralt never does anything by halves.”

Geralt was half tempted to leave the castle again, but he wasn’t sure where he would go.

“Geralt,” Jaskier pleaded. “I did my best. Haven’t you noticed your aches and pains have been better?” When Geralt just continued glaring at him, Jaskier turned to Callonetta. “I’m glad to see you have some brain left. I was worried.”

Callonetta sighed. “I really don’t remember much.” She picked up the lute and turned her attention to tuning the instrument. 

“Is there anything else?” Jaskier asked.

“Marx wanted to know about Wales.”

“I thought that was it.” Jaskier sighed. “Ah, well.” He went into the bathroom where he remained for the next two hours. 

Geralt sat down in a chair and ignored Yennefer climbing up to look at him before ducking back down under the logs. 

Eventually, Jaskier came out of the bathroom looking glossy and smelling of chamomile. “I’m going to be back quite late,” he told Ciri. “Tomorrow is Midsummer day, so keep the defenses up and please remember all I told you.”

“Okay,” Ciri agreed.

“I think I know what’s happened to you,” Jaskier said, turning his attention to Callonetta. “It’s going to be tricky to sort it out, but I’ll have a go at it when I get back tomorrow.” He went to the door and put his hand on the knob. He hesitated, turning to look at Geralt. “Are you still not talking to me?” He sounded miserable. 

“No,” Geralt snarled. 

Jaskier sighed and went out. Geralt looked up once he was gone and saw that the knob was pointing black-down. That was it. Geralt couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t care that it was Midsummer Day tomorrow; he would be leaving.


	20. In which Geralt finds further difficulties in leaving the castle

As the sun started to rise on Midsummer Day Jaskier burst through the door, so loudly that Geralt was sure they were under attack. 

“I'm the tales that the guests will applaud and believe!” Jaskier shouted. Geralt realized that Jaskier was just trying to sing and lay back down in his bed. Jaskier tripped over a chair and got his foot stuck in a stool. Once he had disentangled himself he tried to get upstairs through the broom cupboard, making a disgruntled noise of confusion when he found that it was not the correct door. He finally located the stairs and proceeded to fall up them.

“What is wrong with you?” Geralt asked.

“Rugby club reunion,” Jaskier said with all the dignity he could muster, which was not much, considering he was still laying mostly face-down on the stairs. “I was born to strange sights. Things invisible to see.” Jaskier sighed. “I was on my way to bed.” He sat up and frowned at Geralt, although his gaze was hazy and unfocused. “I know where all the past years are, and who cleft the Devil’s foot.”

“Go to bed,” Yennefer said sleepily. “You’re drunk.”

“Me?” Jaskier squawked. “I assure you, I am stone cold sober.” He got up and stalked upstairs, trailing his hand along the wall. A crash from upstairs announced that Jaskier had not managed to find his door. “I must believe that my shining dishonesty will be my salvation.” Several more crashes came from upstairs before an exclamation as Jaskier managed to locate his door. 

Geralt sat on his bed and listened to Jaskier crash about his room, shouting about his bed dodging him. “He’s impossible.”

The noise Jaskier made woke Ciri and Callonetta who both came downstairs sleepily. 

“We might as well get started on the flowers,” Geralt sighed, realizing that none of them would be able to get back to sleep. Geralt still planned to leave, but he wanted to visit the fields of flowers one last time. It was still cool outside, the air fresh with the smell of flowers. Geralt watched the castle moving through the early morning mist. 

“He made it much better,” Callonetta said as she placed an armful of hibiscus flowers in Ciri’s floating tub.

“Who did?” Ciri asked.

“Jaskier. There were only bushes at first, and they were quite small.”

“You remember being here before?” Ciri asked excitedly—she was still hoping that Callonetta might turn out to be Princess Renfri.

“I think I came here with Valdo Marx,” Callonetta said uncertainty. 

They fetched two more tubs of flowers before heading back into the castle. Geralt meant to leave Ciri and Callonetta to make the Midsummer garlands, but Ciri was too busy questioning Callonetta to really focus on the task, so Geralt ended up making most of the garlands. Jaskier was snoring loudly and didn’t bother to come and help, which only made Geralt more certain that he wanted to leave. That he didn’t want to stay to try to help Jaskier. 

By the time they were finished with the garlands, it was time to open the shop and then there was a rush of customers—all dressed in their finest holiday clothes—and Geralt couldn’t manage to steal away. It wasn’t until midday that the shop quieted down and Geralt managed to head back into the castle. He moved quickly, gathering up his few belongings and some food. 

“Have you come to talk to me?” Yennefer asked.

“In a minute,” Geralt lied as he held his bundle behind his back so that she wouldn’t see. Geralt picked up his stick and was about to leave when someone knocked on the door.

“It’s the mansion. They’re flesh and blood,” Yennefer reported. 

The person knocked again. Geralt huffed in frustration, wondering why this always happened when he was trying to leave. He turned the knob orange-down and opened the mansion door to see a grand carriage at the end of the drive and Vesemir at the door. He was dressed in fine clothes—clearly the sale of the shop had been a wise decision and Geralt wondered exactly how much Jaskier had paid for the space. 

Vesemir stepped into the room and looked around before turning to look at Geralt. “Geralt? What’s happened to you? Have you been ill?” He pulled Geralt into a hug. “You look about ninety! I didn’t know what had happened to you, I tried to search for you but nobody knew where you had gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Geralt said. “When I looked in the mirror and saw myself like this I was so shocked I just...wandered away.”

“Overwork,” Vesemir said mournfully. “This is my fault.”

“Not really,” Geralt said. He wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that Vesemir thought he could be so changed just from working too much. “And you don’t need to worry—Wizard Jaskier took me in.”

“Wizard Jaskier?” Vesemir gasped. “That wicked man? Has _he_ done this to you? Where is he? Let me at him!”

“No, no!” Geralt protested. “Jaskier has been kind to me.” He was shocked to realize that it was true; Jaskier showed his kindness strangely but, considering all Geralt did to antagonize him, Jaskier had been very good to him.

“They say he eats people alive!” Vesemir argued.

“He really doesn’t!” Geralt said. “He really isn’t wicked at all.” Geralt heard a fizz in the grate and looked over to see Yennefer watching with interest. “In all the time I’ve been here I’ve never seen him work an evil spell.”

Vesemir sighed. “I suppose I believe you. Though, I’m sure it’s your doing if he’s reformed.” 

Geralt and Vesemir chatted for a few more minutes before Ciri skipped into the castle. “We’ve shut up the shop. You have a visitor!” Lambert trailed in behind her. 

“Geralt! You should have told me,” Lambert shouted as he pulled Geralt into a hug. “You idiot.”

A moment later Triss and Eskel came into the castle as well, followed by a cheerful Callonetta. The next few minutes were full of hugging and shouting and general commotion. Geralt was surprised that Jaskier hadn’t woken up through it all. He was glad to see everyone, even if it meant he had to further delay his plans to leave the castle. 

“She just arrived and kept turning into a woman and then different dogs and insisting she knew me,” Eskel explained. “I’d never seen her before, but I wanted to help her.”

“Had you met Princess Renfri?” Ciri asked.

“Yes, she was in disguise, of course, but it was obviously her. She wanted a locating spell for Wizard Priscilla but it kept showing that she was between us and Rivia, which the princess insisted couldn’t be right.”

“Excuse me.” Geralt looked up at the interruption and saw Miss Vigo standing by the door. “I’m sorry to have come at a bad time, but I wanted to talk to Jaskier.”

Geralt hesitated. He felt somewhat bad about the way he had driven her out before, just because Jaskier was courting Miss Vigo, but he really didn’t like her.

“Jaskier’s asleep,” Ciri told her. “Would you like to come in and wait?”

“Thank you,” Miss Vigo said, but it was clear she was not pleased with the situation. The room was full of people who knew each other and she was the obvious outsider. It didn’t help when Vesemir commented on her odd clothes and nobody seemed interested in speaking to her. 

Miss Vigo seemed to decide that she’d had enough and went to open the door. 

“I can go wake Jaskier,” Geralt offered. 

“No, that’s alright,” Miss Vigo said. “I have the day off, I’m happy to wait. I just thought I might look around outside—it’s rather stuffy in here with the fire burning.”

That seemed like a good solution so Geralt politely opened the door for her, the knob at purple-down. Outside, the sun was shining brightly over the drifting banks of flowers. 

“Oh, how lovely,” Miss Vigo said, jumping down into the grassy lane.

“Don’t go to the southeast!” Geralt warned. 

“I won’t go far,” Miss Vigo said agreeably. 

“What happened to my carriage?” Vesemir asked, peering out the door. Geralt found himself trying to explain the mechanics of the door, which he didn’t fully understand himself. 

Without any warning Yennefer surged up from her logs. “Jaskier!” she roared. “Jaskier! The Wizard of the Waste has found your brother’s family!”

Several loud thumps came from upstairs and then Jaskier came tearing down the stairs. Everyone scattered at his appearance. Jaskier’s hair was in disarray and there were red rims around his eyes. “Fuck that man!” Jaskier snarled. “Thank you, Yen!” He pushed past Vesemir and hurled himself through the door. 

“The window in Jaskier’s room looks into Wales,” Yennefer hissed. Geralt raced up the stairs to see what was happening. 

“What a filthy room!” Vesemir sounded horrified. 

Geralt ignored the crowd of people behind him and looked out the window into a drizzly garden. Valdo Marx was leaning against a swingset, beckoning to Marilka. Jaskier appeared on the lawn—he didn’t bother with magic, he just charged straight at the other wizard. For a moment, Marx hesitated, and then he ran. He ran across the lawn and over the fence, with Jaskier just behind. Once over the fence they were both lost from view. Geralt cursed under his breath, but at least the children were safe. He saw Ferrant herding them both inside the house. 

Eskel, Callonetta, Ciri, and Lambert went back downstairs but Vesemir was still glowering around Jaskier’s room. “Look at those spiders!”

“And the dust!” Triss agreed, wrinkling her nose. 

“I think I saw some brooms in that passage,” Vesemir said. 

“I’ll fetch them,” Triss said. “This room is a disgrace.”

Geralt hovered on the stairs, wondering if he should try to stop them. 

“Geralt!” Ciri called. “We’re going to look at the mansion, would you like to come?”

That seemed like a good way to distract Triss and Vesemir; he called for them to come and hobbled down the stairs. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Geralt could feel powerful magic building in the room. There was the scent of ozone and the pressure seemed to build until Geralt could almost feel it tingling across his skin. As Turnip-Head hopped into the room, the skull started chattering its teeth and the lute started twanging discordant notes. Geralt took a deep breath, trying to figure out what was happening. Turnip-Head fell across the bench towards the skull and there was a fizzle of strong magic taking effect. The skull ended up inside the turnip, giving the suggestion of a face. 

“Now I can speak,” Turnip-Head announced. 

“I may faint,” Vesemir declared. 

“Nonsense,” Triss said. “It’s only a magician’s golem. It has to do what it was sent here to do. They’re harmless otherwise.”

Callonetta _did_ faint, flopping quietly to the floor. 

Turnip-Head hopped towards her. “This is one of the parts I was sent to find.” It turned to face Geralt. “My skull was far away and I had run out of strength. I would have been stuck in that hedge forever if you hadn’t found me.”

“Who sent you?” Geralt asked. “What are you supposed to do?”

Turnip-Head swung her arms around. “There are still parts missing.”

“What is Callonetta a part of?” Geralt asked. 

“Let her collect herself,” Yennefer advised. “She—” she stopped speaking suddenly and sunk low on her logs. 

A new voice spoke, muffled as if it was coming from inside a box. “Ciri, tell your master Jaskier that he fell for my decoy. Now I have the woman named Fringilla Vigo in my fortress in the Waste. Tell him I will only let her go if he comes to fetch her. Is that clear, Cirilla?”


	21. In which a contract is concluded before witnesses

Geralt cursed as he ran to grab his walking-stick and then through the cupboard into the shop. This was his fault for letting Miss Vigo wander outside. “Jaskier may have forgiven me for a lot of things, but he won’t forgive me for this,” he muttered. The seven-league boots had been repurposed to hold flowers and Geralt hauled them out of the window display, dumping out the flowers and water as he stomped to the door of the shop. He maneuvered until he figured out which direction was southeast and then set the boots down facing the correct direction. 

Geralt stepped into them and began to stride. The world blurred around him, even more intense with two boots on at once. He saw brief flashes of the world as he passed: bracken on the moors, a lake in a valley, rivers and mountains. He used his stick to stop himself as the landscape changed—all around him was barren sand. It shimmered in the heat and the only growing things were dried out, gray bushes. He took another step into the waste; the sand turned from yellow to gray, but nothing else changed. Another step and something finally broke the endless expanse of desert. About a quarter mile away, an oddly shaped building made up of twisting towers stood on a small rocky rise. 

Geralt stepped out of the boots and left them behind; they were too heavy to carry in the intense heat so he moved forward with only his walking-stick. As he approached he could see that the building was constructed out of thousands of yellow chimney pots fused together. 

At the top of the rise, two small figures were waiting in the small amount of shade cast by the fortress. The two pages looked sullen and not at all pleased to see Geralt.

“Good afternoon,” Geralt panted. 

One of the page boys bowed and held out his hand, pointing towards the misshapen dark archway. Geralt followed him inside, hearing the other boy follow behind. The entrance disappeared behind them, but Geralt just shrugged and moved on. That was a problem to deal with later. 

The pages led him down a hallway lit by flickering yellow flames that just made the shadows more eerie. Eventually they emerged into a larger chamber. The Wizard was standing in the room, waiting. He looked different now, tall and skinny with fair hair and a spotless white suit. 

Geralt stalked towards him, waving his walking-stick.

“I will not be threatened!” Valdo Marx hissed.

“Then give me Miss Vigo and you won’t be! I’ll take her and go away.”

The Wizard backed away, gesturing with both hands. The page boys both melted into sticky orange blobs and flew towards Geralt. 

“Get off!” Geralt growled, trying to fend them off with his walking-stick. The blobs didn’t seem to like the stick but they managed to get behind Geralt and glued him to a chimney-pot pillar. It was disgusting and impossible to get out of. 

“I’d rather have green slime,” Geralt grumbled. “I hope those weren’t real boys.”

“They weren’t.” 

“Let me go!” Geralt snarled.

“No.” He turned away, seeming to completely lose interest in Geralt. 

“Where is Miss Vigo?” Geralt asked. He was starting to think that he had made a huge mistake in coming here alone.

“You won’t find her. We’ll wait for Jaskier to come.”

“He’s not coming,” Geralt said. “He’s got more sense than that. And your curse hasn’t worked all the way.” He really hoped that was true, and that Jaskier really wasn’t coming.

“It will.” Valdo Marx smiled menacingly. “Now that you’ve fallen for our deception and come here. Jaskier will have to be honest for once.” Valdo waved a hand and a chair trundled forward out of the shadows. There was a woman sitting on it, and at a gesture from Valdo it sat up straight. It didn't have a head. 

“Put her head back!” Geralt said. “She looks terrible like that.”

Valdo snorted. “I got rid of both heads months ago. I sold Wizard Priscilla’s skull when I sold her lute. Princess Renfri’s head is walking about somewhere with the other left-over parts. This body is a perfect mixture of Princess Renfri and Wizard Priscilla. It just needs Jaskier’s head to make the perfect human.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Geralt muttered.

“When we have Jaskier’s head we will rule the continent together!”

“You’re completely mad!” Geralt snapped. “You can’t just make jigsaws of people! And I don’t think Jaskier’s head would do a thing you wanted.”

“Jaskier will do exactly what I say,” Valdo said with a sly smile. “We’ll control his fire demon.”

Geralt was starting to feel very afraid. He wasn’t sure how he would be able to get out of this, and he couldn’t decide if he desperately hoped Jaskier would come or if he wanted Jaskier to stay far away. He waved his walking-stick at Marx. “Where is Miss Vigo?” 

Valdo Marx did not like Geralt threatening him. He took a step further away. “I’m very tired,” he said. “You people keep spoiling my plans. First Priscilla wouldn’t come near the Waste, and when she finally _did_ she planted those blasted trees. Then Princess Renfri went up north to look for Priscilla rather than coming _here_.” He sighed. “Then there was Jaskier. I had to resort to that curse to catch him and while I was doing that—” He took a step back towards Geralt before remembering the walking-stick and stepping back again. “You! You got what was was left of Priscilla’s brain and caused me more trouble. Now, when I bring you here you threaten me and argue? I’ve worked very hard and I am not interested in arguing!”

Geralt started whacking at the sticky orange goop with his stick. “Get off! Let me go!” he growled at it. It seemed to work—bits of the stuff snapped off and Geralt kept going. He had managed to free his shoulders, making the work easier, when a dull boom echoed through the chamber. A piece of the fortress wall blew inwards with a huge crash as hundreds of clay pots shattered across the ground. A figure stepped into the space, backlit against the harsh sunlight. Geralt turned, hoping to see Jaskier. The figure hopped into the room on its one leg. 

Valdo Marx yowled in rage and rushed towards the scarecrow. There was another violent bang as the two collided in a magical cloud. Geralt couldn’t see what was happening but he could hear crashing and shouting from the two combatants. He snarled in frustration and kept working to free himself. A shadow fell across the hall and Geralt looked up to see Jaskier standing in the gap in the wall, the long sleeves of his jacket trailing in the wind from another blast of magic. 

Jaskier raised his arms and shouted a long word in a language that Geralt didn’t know. Thunder crashed as he finished speaking and Marx and the scarecrow both jolted backwards. The thunder echoed around the room, amplified by the chimney pots. Marx folded in on himself, looking pale and diminished. The last of the magical cloud faded away and Marx collapsed with a clatter. As the sounds died away Jaskier and the scarecrow were left standing over a pile of bones. 

Geralt finally managed to free his legs and immediately went to the headless figure on the throne; it was really getting on his nerves. 

“No, you won’t find his heart here,” Jaskier told the scarecrow. “His demon will have that. I think it’s been in control for a long time.” 

Geralt pulled a sash from around the body’s waist and used that to cover the headless shoulders. 

“Typical!” Jaskier said as he came up to Geralt. “I break my neck to get here and find you calmly tidying up!”

Geralt looked at his pouting face. As he had feared, Jaskier hadn’t bothered to shave or tidy his hair. His sleeves were torn in several places, and the rest of the suit was wrinkled. Geralt felt as though there was a lead weight in his stomach—Jaskier must actually be in love with Miss Vigo to have come here in such disarray. 

“I came to find Miss Vigo,” Geralt said. 

Jaskier huffed. “I had hoped if I arranged for your family to visit it would keep you still for once! But no—” 

Before he could continue the scarecrow hopped in front of Geralt. “I was sent by Wizard Priscilla,” she said. “I was guarding her bushes when the Wizard of the Waste caught her. She put as much magic on me as she could and ordered me to rescue her. The Wizard had taken her to pieces and scattered them.” 

Geralt realized that she was answering his questions from before Geralt had rushed off. 

“So when Renfri used the locating spells they must have been pointing to you.” 

The scarecrow bobbed in an approximation of a nod. “To me or to her skull.”

“And Callonetta is made of parts of Priscilla and Renfri?”

The scarecrow nodded again. “They told me that the Wizard and his demon were apart and that the Wizard could be defeated.”

Jaskier waved the scarecrow aside. “Bring the body to the castle. I can sort you out there. Geralt and I need to get back before the fire demon finds a way past the castle’s defenses.” He took Geralt’s wrist. “Come on, where are the seven-league boots?”

Geralt pulled back. “But Miss Vigo—”

Jaskier kept his grip firm, trying to tow Geralt out of the fortress. “Don’t you understand? Miss Vigo _is_ the fire demon! If it gets into the castle it’s going to kill both me and Yennefer!”

Geralt’s eyes widened. “Fuck! She’s been in twice already. But she went out before I left.”

“Fuck,” Jaskier agreed, voice tight. “Did she touch anything?”

“The lute.” 

“Then it’s still inside,” Jaskier hissed. “Come on!” He pulled Geralt over to the gap in the wall. “Follow carefully!” he called to the scarecrow. “I’m going to have to raise a wind—no time to get the boots.” He helped Geralt over the jagged edge of the hole and out onto the desert sand. “Keep hold of my hand and don’t stop running,” Jaskier warned. Geralt nodded and started into a stumbling run across the sand. As they went a powerful wind kicked up behind them. It whistled around them in a cloud of dust as they skimmed across the ground.

“It’s not Yennefer’s fault!” Geralt shouted. “I told her not to tell!”

“She wouldn’t have anyway,” Jaskier shouted back. “I knew she’d never give away a fellow fire demon.”

“What about Wales?”

“I had to leave an opening. The only chance I had to find Princess Renfri was to use the curse Marx had put on me to get close to him.”

“Why pretend to run away then?”

“I’m a coward,” Jaskier admitted. “The only way I could do it was to tell myself I wasn’t.”

Geralt looked at the swirling wind around them and realized that Jaskier was being honest—the last bit of the curse had come true. The realization made him stumble but Jaskier’s grip remained firm.

“Keep running!” Jaskier shouted. “If you stop you’ll fall out of the wind! My whole plan was flawed—I was counting on getting help from Priscilla and when all that was left was Callonetta I was so scared I had to go and get drunk. And then you walked right into a trap!”

Geralt felt his heart sink again. “I’m a failure! It’s because I’m the eldest.”

“Nonsense!” Jaskier said. “You just don’t stop to think!” They started to slow down, dust kicked up around them in dense clouds but through it Geralt caught glimpses of green as they approached the edge of the waste. “And you’re too kind,” Jaskier continued. “I was hoping you would be too jealous to let the demon into the castle.”

They skimmed across a lake and slowed further, the wind dying down around them as they approached the castle. Jaskier maneuvered them until they crashed through the castle door. 

“Ciri!” Jaskier shouted. 

Geralt looked around, surprised to find that everything looked the same. Jaskier let go of Geralt and darted for the lute. Before he could reach it, the instrument exploded with a melodious boom. 

Fringilla Vigo was standing beside the hearth, smiling menacingly. 

“Your wizard is dead,” Jaskier said. 

“Isn’t that too bad,” Fringilla replied. “Now I can make myself a new human who’s much better.” Her smile widened. “The curse is fulfilled. I can lay hands on your heart now.” She reached down into the health and plucked Yennefer out of the grate. 

“Help!” Yennefer flickered, her eyes wide and terrified. 

“Nobody can help you,” Fringilla said. “You are going to help me control my new human. Let me show you. I only need to tighten my grip.” She clenched her fingers tighter around Yen. 

Yennefer and Jaskier both screamed. She flared up in agony while his face went pale and blue-tinged before he collapsed. Geralt wasn’t sure if he was breathing. 

“He’s faking,” Fringilla said, staring at Jaskier in shock.

“No he’s not!” Yennefer screamed. “His heart is soft—let go!”

Geralt raised his walking-stick, pausing for a moment to consider his words. “Stick, beat Fringilla, but don’t hurt anyone else.” Geralt swung the stick towards Fringilla’s hand as hard as he could. There was a satisfying crack and Fringilla yelped and dropped Yennefer. Yennefer rolled across the floor, unable to stop herself. Geralt let go of his walking-stick to make a desperate dive to rescue Yen. Behind him, Miss Vigo yelped again and when Geralt looked back he saw that his stick was continuing to hit her on its own. 

Geralt picked up Yennefer and stood, holding her carefully. She was pale blue and trembling. The dark lump at the center—Jaskier’s _heart—_ beat faintly. He held Yen and the heart as carefully as he could and turned back to face Fringilla. She was still under attack and seemed to realize she was outnumbered, making a run for the door.

“Don’t let her go!” Geralt shouted. 

Everyone raced to block the doors, but before Ciri could get to the castle door, Callonetta—pale and with her eyes still shut—made it there first and flung the door open. The castle had stopped moving, standing still in an open field of flowers. Fringilla tried to run out the door but Turnip-Head appeared, with the body of Princess Renfri draped over her shoulders, managing to block the door. 

Geralt’s stick was on fire now, as the demon radiated a dangerous heat. Fringilla grabbed Ciri and dragged her close, using her to block the stick—it had been told not to hurt anyone else so it hovered, still flaming. Geralt knew that they only had moments before Fringilla managed to make it out, and she was too powerful to be allowed to leave. Not without a wizard to keep her power bound. 

“Yennefer,” Geralt said. “I need to break the contract. Will it kill you?”

“No,” Yennefer said. “It would if anyone else did it, but you can talk life into things. You can do this.”

Geralt nodded, focusing all of his attention on Yennefer. “Then have another thousand years!” He carefully plucked Yennefer off the black lump. Yennefer whirled loose and hovered above Geralt.

“I feel so light!” Yennefer whispered, her shape swirled and changed into a pale lilac. “I’m free!” She whirled to the chimney and darted up it. “I’m free!” she cheered. 

Geralt turned his attention back to the faintly beating heart in his hands and Jaskier, unconscious on the floor. He knew he didn’t have much time but he wasn’t sure what to do. He knelt on the floor and placed the black lump on the left side of his chest. “Go in,” Geralt ordered. “Get in there and work!” He pushed down on the heart and felt it sink down, beating more strongly as it went. 

As soon as it disappeared Jaskier stirred with a groan. “Oh fuck. I’ve got a hangover.” 

“You hit your head on the floor.” Geralt told him.

Jaskier started to scramble to his feet. “I’ve got to go! I need to rescue Geralt!”

“I’m here,” Geralt said. He stood—feeling lighter than he had in months—and grabbed Jaskier’s shoulder before he could make for the door. He was almost distracted by the sight of his hand—no longer was it gnarled with age—but he managed to drag his attention back to the fight. Fringilla had realized that the scarecrow was flammable and was attempting to maneuver Geralt’s flaming walking stick close enough to light it on fire. “But so is Fringilla! You need to do something about her!” 

“Geralt?” Jaskier finally seemed to be able to focus although he still looked a little dazed. “Your hair looks just like starlight.” 

“The demon, Jaskier!” Geralt snapped. 

“Right,” Jaskier said. “Right.” He stepped forward, facing Fringilla. He held up one hand and sang out several words that were lost in a crash of thunder. Jaskier stepped forward again and a small black thing flew into his hand—a heart shrunken to almost nothing. Fringilla hissed, a sound like water being poured on a fire, and held out a hand towards Jaskier.

“No, I’m afraid not.” Jaskier said. “You had your time. Plenty of it, by the looks of this. You wanted to take my heart and let Yennefer die.” 

Fringilla hissed again and shifted as if she were going to leap at him. Jaskier didn’t give her the chance; he pressed the heart between his hands and Valdo Marx’s heart crumbled into black dust. Fringilla wailed one last time before she faded away. 

The moment Fringilla was gone and the heart was dust, the scarecrow disappeared. If Geralt had cared to look he would have seen two women standing in the doorway, smiling at each other. Priscilla and Renfri were returned to themselves. 

Geralt did not care to look, because Jaskier had turned to him, stepping close to Geralt and reaching out to touch Geralt’s hair.

“The silver really does suit you,” Jaskier said.

“Yennefer’s gone,” Geralt said. “I had to break the contract.”

Jaskier smiled ruefully. “We hoped you would. We didn’t want to end up like Fringilla and Valdo. Are you going to keep the color?”

“I suppose,” Geralt said. Jaskier’s eyes were brighter now that his heart was back, a lovely vibrant blue.

Jaskier and Geralt were too focused on each other to notice as Princess Renfri said, “I ought to return to my father.” 

On the other side of the room, Priscilla made her way to Eskel. “I’m sorry, the memories I had of you were actually the princess’.”

“It’s all right,” Eskel said. “An understandable mistake, all things considered.”

Priscilla smiled. “Would you let me take you on as a student?”

Jaskier leaned in close, placing a hand on Geralt’s waist. “I think we ought to live happily ever after.” 

“Hm,” Geralt hummed, knowing that living happily ever after with Jaskier was likely to be much more eventful than any story made it sound. 

“It should be hair-raising,” Jaskier added with a bright grin. 

They failed to notice that Princess Renfri, Wizard Priscilla, and Triss were all trying to speak to Jaskier, that Ciri was tugging on Jaskier’s jacket, or that Vesemir, Eskel, and Lambert were all trying to get Geralt’s attention. 

“That was an amazing use of magic!” Triss said.

“Geralt, I need your advice,” Eskel tried.

“Wizard Jaskier, I must apologize for trying to bite you so often,” said Priscilla. “Under normal circumstances I would never bite someone. Unless—”

“Unless?” Eskel echoed. 

“Geralt, I think this woman is a princess,” Vesemir said.

“Sir,” Princess Renfri said. “I must thank you for rescuing me from the Wizard.”

“Geralt! The spell’s off,” Lambert said. 

Jaskier and Geralt were holding hands and couldn’t stop smiling. “Don’t bother me now,” Jaskier said. “I only did it for the money.”

“Liar!” Geralt snorted.

“I said!” Ciri shouted. “That _Yennefer_ is back!”

That did get their attention. They looked at the grate, where a familiar purple face was flickering happily among the logs.

“You didn’t need to come back.” Jaskier’s smile grew impossibly wider.

“I don’t mind, as long as I can come and go,” Yennefer said. “Besides, it’s raining in Rivia.”


End file.
